China Sentences Canadian to Death for Drug Conviction
China Sentences Canadian to Death for Drug Conviction
Canadian Robert Schellenberg was convicted of taking part in methamphetamine smuggling and sentenced to death in a one-day proceeding just days after the court announced he would be retried. Two months earlier, the same court sentenced Mr. Schellenberg to 15 years in prison for the same offense, but this time around prosecutors charged him with being a key figure, not just an accessory, in an international drug-smuggling ring.
The detention of two Canadian citizens in China and unexpected comments from President Trump have magnified the political stakes of the case involving Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Photo: The Canadian Press via AP.
The 36-year-old, who was arrested more than four years ago, has maintained his innocence throughout. On Monday he stood impassively when the judge delivered the sentence.
Western legal experts have called the trial an attempt by China to pressure Canada over the arrest, at U.S. request, of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and daughter of the founder of Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s biggest telecommunications networking-gear maker and an influential Chinese national champion.
“We are a bit like the meat in a sandwich right now,” said Peter MacKay, Canada’s former foreign minister and now a partner at law firm Baker McKenzie. He added his main concern is Chinese officials using the detention and sentencing of Canadian citizens to warn other nations about aligning with the U.S. in its cold-war approach against Beijing. “They wouldn’t dream of doing this [to] the U.S.,” he said.
Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies’s chief financial officer, who is on bail in Vancouver awaiting proceedings for extradition to the U.S.
Photo:
handout ./Reuters
Following Ms. Meng’s arrest, China threatened Canada with consequences. Chinese authorities have since detained two Canadians—former diplomat Michael Kovrig and entrepreneur Michael Spavor—on serious national-security allegations. Neither has been charged. It has publicized Mr. Schellenberg’s case.
Even before Ms. Meng’s arrest, Canada was under pressure from the U.S. and other countries in the Five Eyes intelligence-gathering alliance to contain Huawei’s presence in its telecommunications networks, due to the cybersecurity risks from using their equipment.
A security review of Canada’s telecommunications’ networks is under way, and officials will issue recommendations in due course, a spokesman for Canada’s Public Security Minister said. The spokesman added the detention of two Canadians and Mr. Schellenberg’s sentence “does not affect our examination of emerging 5G technology.”
Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, said Canada would be hard pressed to allow Huawei equipment in Canada’s next-generation 5G mobile networks given recent diplomatic developments that are likely to lead to a hardening of Canadian public opinion against China.
In Ottawa on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the death sentence was of extreme concern to the government, “as it should be to all our international friends and allies that China has chosen to begin to arbitrarily apply [the] death penalty as in this case facing a Canadian.”
Later Monday, a spokesman for Canada’s foreign ministry said the government has sought clemency from China for Mr. Schellenberg and will continue to do so. Furthermore, Canada’s foreign ministry said it updated its advisory for Canadians in or traveling to China “due to the risk of arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
The Trudeau government has defended the arrest of Ms. Meng as part of a legal process. She is out on bail in Vancouver awaiting proceedings for extradition to the U.S. on charges related to Iranian sanctions violations. Mr. Schellenberg’s death sentence is likely to add an emotional element to the mix.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the imposition of the death sentence on Mr. Schellenberg was of extreme concern to his government.
Photo:
martin ouellet-diotte/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Roland Paris, a former foreign-policy adviser to Mr. Trudeau and now a professor at the University of Ottawa, said the move is unlikely to sway Ottawa. “Canada will stand by the rule of law through thick and thin, both in our domestic proceedings and in how we expect Canadians abroad to be treated,” he said. “Chinese pressure will not change that.”
The U.S. and other Western allies have condemned China’s detention of Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling last month for their immediate release.
Guy Saint-Jacques, who was Canada’s ambassador to China from 2012 to 2016, said he was hopeful the U.S. would raise concerns about China’s recent actions directly with officials in Beijing. “The only voice that China will listen to is that of the U.S.,” the former envoy said.
Donald Clarke, an expert in Chinese law at George Washington University, called the case “hostage diplomacy.” Mr. Clarke, among other legal scholars, has cited irregularities in Mr. Schellenberg’s case: Tried in 2016, he wasn’t sentenced until November last year. A month later, following Ms. Meng’s arrest, a higher court rejected his appeal for a lighter sentence and made the unusual decision to order a retrial after prosecutors, who hadn’t appealed the initial ruling, cited new evidence.
China is the world’s most prolific user of court-ordered death sentences, though it has applied the penalty with greater oversight in recent years. Drug cases are frequent targets, and in 2009 China executed a Briton on charges of heroin smuggling despite calls for a reprieve over questions about the defendant’s mental fitness.
On Monday, as in his original trial, Mr. Schellenberg pleaded not guilty and said he was framed by a Chinese acquaintance he met in Dalian while traveling there in 2014. The acquaintance, Xu Qing, admitted in court on Monday to helping rent a warehouse and making other arrangements for a group that he denied knowing was a drug ring. Mr. Xu also denied knowing of a plan to smuggle 222 kilograms of methamphetamine from Dalian to Australia hidden inside tires, and said he later reported it to the police.
Chinese telecom giant Huawei has long caused tension between Washington and Beijing. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains what the company does and why it’s significant. (Photo: Aly Song/Reuters)
More on Canadian Case, Huawei
Mr. Xu’s testimony Monday was his first appearance in any of the proceedings for Mr. Schellenberg since the latter’s arrest four years ago, and the prosecutors’ case hinged on it.
In their testimonies, Messrs. Schellenberg and Xu agreed that they went together to buy industrial tools, which each denied knowing were for drug-repackaging, along with tires and to visit the warehouse. Both said they didn’t know that methamphetamines hidden inside bags of plastic pellets were stored at the warehouse. Each claimed he went along because the other asked him to. Each said the other was working under the direction of a man named Khamla Wong, who was arrested in Thailand in 2016 for alleged drug smuggling.
After an hour to deliberate following the full day of hearings, the panel of three judges returned the verdict at 8 p.m. The chief judge, Qiu Chunhua, read the decision loudly, ordering severe punishment for Mr. Schellenberg for “disrupting the stability of global society.” Chinese courts rarely present a verdict on the same day as the hearing.
Under Chinese law, a defendant cannot receive a heavier sentence upon appeal, unless the prosecution brings new charges, according to legal experts. Prosecutors on Monday changed their original charge that Mr. Schellenberg was an accessory to drug smuggling and instead charged him with having been a key participant in an international smuggling ring.
The Intermediate People's Court in Dalian where Mr. Schellenberg was tried, convicted and sentenced to death
Photo:
china stringer network/Reuters
The most concrete new evidence submitted to try to prove his membership in an international smuggling ring was a log of a phone call placed from his phone to a person, Mai Qingxiang, who was later convicted of drug smuggling. Mr. Schellenberg, who doesn’t speak Chinese, said that he didn’t know Mr. Mai and that the call was made by Mr. Xu, borrowing his phone.
“I don’t know that person,” said Mr. Schellenberg of Mr. Mai, as he stood before the court in a wrinkled white sweatshirt, black pants and glasses.
Judges disagreed with the defense’s argument that Mr. Schellenberg wasn’t culpable if someone else placed the calls on his phone, siding with prosecutors who argued that circumstantial evidence showed Mr. Schellenberg was involved.
No relatives of Mr. Schellenberg attended the trial. “It’s the worst thing that could happen,” said Mr. Schellenberg’s aunt, Lauri Nelson-Jones who lives in the U.S. “We didn’t want to imagine it.”
Ms. Nelson-Jones said Mr. Schellenberg grew up in Abbotsford, British Columbia, a city near the U.S. border and about 100 miles north of Seattle. She said he moved to Alberta around 2012 to work in that province’s oil sector, where he saved up money to travel. After an initial visit to Thailand, he returned to Alberta to work some more before heading back to Southeast Asia again. Ms. Nelson-Jones said she believed Mr. Schellenberg had been traveling for less than a year at the time of his arrest in China.
—Kim Mackrael in Ottawa contributed to this article.
Write to Eva Dou at eva.dou@wsj.com and Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com
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