China’s diplomatic clash with Canada escalated sharply Monday when a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian to death for drug smuggling at a one-day retrial ordered weeks after a Chinese executive’s arrest in Canada.
BEIJING — China’s diplomatic clash with Canada escalated sharply Monday when a Chinese court sentenced a Canadian to death for drug smuggling at a one-day retrial ordered weeks after a Chinese executive’s arrest in Canada.
In announcing the death penalty against the Canadian, Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, the court, in the northeast city of Dalian, gave no indication that his sentence might be reduced to prison time.
Schellenberg’s fate could become a volatile factor in diplomacy between Beijing and Ottawa in the aftermath of the arrest by Canadian authorities of a Chinese technology executive in British Columbia last month — a move that incensed the Chinese government.
Schellenberg had appealed a 15-year prison sentence for smuggling methamphetamines. But during his retrial, against the backdrop of sharply increased tensions between China and Canada, the court sided with prosecutors who called for capital punishment.
“The evidence is compelling and ample, and the criminal charges are well founded,” the Dalian Intermediate People’s Court said of Schellenberg’s death sentence, according to an official account published online. “Schellenberg was a principal culprit.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, reacting to the death sentence, said his government would try to intercede in Schellenberg’s case.
“I will say it is of extreme concern to us as a government, as it should be to all our international friends and allies that China has chosen to begin to arbitrarily apply death penalty” in cases like this one, he told reporters in Ottawa.
Schellenberg’s aunt, Lauri Nelson-Jones, said by telephone from Maryland that the decision was the “worst-case scenario.
