A Canadian businessman charged in China with spying after the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou has been sentenced to 11 years in prison, a day after another Canadian’s death sentence was upheld.

Michael Spavor, who has been under arrest since December 2018, was handed the jail sentence in Dandong city in northeast Liaoning province on the morning of August 11.

A day earlier, another Canadian, Robert Schellenberg, had his death sentence for drug trafficking upheld by a court in Shenyang city, also in Liaoning.

Spavor, whose hearing had taken place behind closed doors in March, was found guilty by the Dandong Intermediate People’s Court of stealing and supplying state secrets to other countries.

In a statement, the court also said it had confiscated Spavor’s personal assets worth 50,000 yuan ($7,700) and that he would be deported.

Spavor, who worked in Dandong promoting investments and tourism in North Korea, was arrested at the same time as former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, who has also been accused of spying. It is still not clear when he will be sentenced.

Canadian ambassador to China Dominic Barton, who met Spavor on August 11, said the latter had this message to convey: “Thank you for all your support, it means a lot to me. I’m in good spirits, and I want to get home.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Spavor’s conviction and sentencing “absolutely unacceptable and unjust”.

“The verdict for Mr Spavor comes after more than two and a half years of arbitrary detention, a lack of transparency in the legal process, and a trial that did not satisfy even the minimum standards required by international law,” he said in a statement released shortly after the verdict was handed down.

China and Canada have been in a diplomatic stalemate after the Canadian authorities detained telecom giant Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng in December 2018 on an extradition request by the US to face fraud charges. Nine days after her arrest in Vancouver, China detained the two Canadians.

Meng returned to court on August 4 for what would be the final stage of her hearing.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that things are happening right now while events are going on in Vancouver,” Barton told reporters on August 10 in Shenyang.

Canada was expecting Spavor’s sentence to be between five and 20 years, he said.

Speaking to journalists gathered at the Canadian embassy in Beijing on August 11 via video link from Dandong, Barton said: “Eleven years is a long time. So we will continue to work very, very hard to get him out and certainly a lot earlier than that.”

Ambassadors from Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as senior diplomats from 25 mostly European countries but also the US and Japan, had gathered at the embassy to await the verdict on Spavor and to show their support.

The US top diplomat Antony Blinken condemned the Canadians’ detentions and Spavor’s sentence, and called for their immediate and unconditional release.

“The practice of arbitrarily detaining individuals to exercise leverage over foreign governments is completely unacceptable. People should never be used as bargaining chips,” he said in a statement.

The court’s statement did not specify when Spavor would be deported, or if his nearly 1,000 days spent in detention would count towards his prison sentence.

Spavor’s spying charges apparently involve photographs of military aircraft he had taken at airports.

He has 10 days to appeal his sentence.

THE STRAITS TIMES (SINGAPORE)/ASIA NEWS NETWORK