Defendant’s appeal hearing goes awry as high court says man first tried in 2016 got away too lightly
As tensions continue to simmer between Beijing and Ottawa, a high court in northeast China on Saturday ordered convicted Canadian drug smuggler Robert Lloyd Schellenberg to be retried on the grounds his original sentence was too lenient.
Prosecutors said at an appeal hearing at the Liaoning Provincial High People’s Court that it was wrong for a lower court to have sentenced Schellenberg to only 15 years in prison. The Canadian was convicted in 2016 but no details of his initial trial or sentencing had ever been made public.
The high court said in a statement that it had ordered the case to be returned to the Intermediate People’s Court in Dalian, also in Liaoning, for a retrial.
The statement said that Schellenberg was tried at the intermediate court on November 20,2016 on a charge of drug smuggling. As well as handing down the prison term, the court ordered the seizure of 150,000 yuan (US$21,800) worth of the defendant’s assets.
