Beijing: A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a Canadian national to death for his involvement in smuggling drugs amid increasing tensions between Canada and China over the recent arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was sentenced to death at the Dalian Intermediate People’s Court in northeast China’s Liaoning Province, state-run Xinhua news agency reported on Monday night.
All his personal assets will also be confiscated. Earlier in the day Schellenberg told the court that he had been framed when prosecutors pushed for a harsher sentence in a case which could further exacerbate tensions between the US, Canada and China. In his defence at his retrial, Schellenberg, a 36-year-old former oil industry employee, said he was a tourist framed by criminals, rejecting allegations he had smuggled more than 200 kgs of methamphetamine in China, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. While Schellenberg was initially detained in Liaoning province in 2015, his case assumed significance in the backdrop of increased tensions between Canada and China over Huawei CFO Meng’s arrest.
