Canadian sentenced to death in China given new trial

A Canadian detained in China on drug smuggling charges for more than a decade has had his death sentence thrown out and a new trial ordered, his lawyer says.

Zhang Dongshuo, a lawyer for Robert Schellenberg, told The Globe and Mail on Friday that the decision was made by the Supreme People’s Court. No date for the new trial has yet been set and it is not clear whether an open trial would be held or if the court would issue a revised judgment without a public hearing.

The decision to retry him occurred weeks after a thawing in the relationship between Canada and China.

Mr. Schellenberg, from Abbotsford, B.C., was first arrested in 2014 and initially sentenced to 15 years in prison in relation to a scheme to smuggle methamphetamine to Australia. He was sentenced to death in a retrial that occurred shortly after Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou was arrested at Vancouver’s airport in late 2018.

In a statement Friday evening, Global Affairs Canada confirmed Canada is aware of a decision in Mr. Schellenberg’s case, but would not comment further, citing privacy concerns. Ottawa also said it will continue to provide consular services to him and his family.

A spokesperson for the Schellenberg family, Anna Marie White, said in a statement the news was welcome. “As you can imagine, it is very encouraging to see this turn of events. We are all hoping for continued good news from the retrial,” she said.

The decision to try Mr. Schellenberg again occurred after Prime Minister Mark Carney visited China last month and agreed to a new strategic partnership with Beijing.

The visit represented an easing of painful relations between Ottawa and Beijing after Ms. Meng’s arrest. The China-Canada agreement achieved by Mr. Carney is part of Ottawa’s efforts to seek bigger overseas export markets and new foreign investment to offset the economic damage caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s protectionist tariffs.

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During the four-day visit, Mr. Carney said China is a more predictable trading partner than the United States.

Global Affairs did not respond to a question about whether Mr. Schellenberg’s plight was raised during the recent trade mission.

But Canadian officials have worked behind the scenes for years for clemency or leniency for Mr. Schellenberg.

He has always maintained his innocence, describing himself as a tourist who was enmeshed in the conspiracy by his translator, Chinese national Xu Qing.

“I am not a drug smuggler. I am not a drug user. I am a normal person,” Mr. Schellenberg said at trial. “I am innocent.”

Last year, advocates worried he was at risk of being executed after The Globe and Mail reported China had put to death four other Canadians.

In November, 2018, he received a 15-year sentence for his alleged role in the scheme, but the Chinese authorities reopened his case in early 2019, after a cratering of relations between Ottawa and Beijing.

It took two years for Chinese authorities to bring Mr. Schellenberg to his first trial, and a further two years to sentence him. But the scheduling of a retrial took less than two weeks, after a hearing in which a Chinese court took the highly unusual step of welcoming foreign reporters to observe.

During that one-day trial in January, 2019, Mr. Schellenberg’s sentence was upgraded to the death penalty, a decision Canada denounced as “arbitrary.”

Mr. Schellenberg worked in the Alberta oil patch before embarking on a lengthy trip in 2013 that took him to Thailand and then China, his family had told The Globe.

Mr. Schellenberg launched an appeal against the new verdict, but this was rejected in August, 2021. China has a conviction rate of more than 99 per cent, according to official statistics, and appeals are rarely successful.

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Mike Hager is a reporter with The Globe and Mail’s B.C. Bureau in Vancouver. In recent years, he has covered subjects such as hate crimes, Big Tech's tax strategies in Canada, police oversight, real estate, the COVID-19 pandemic, money laundering , and the medical , recreational, and illicit cannabis industries. He loves writing incisive features about the characters who live on Canada’s West Coast.

Mike's reporting has been recognized by the National Newspaper Awards, Jack Webster Foundation, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Online Journalism Awards.

Before joining The Globe, Mike worked as a reporter for The Vancouver Sun. He has a degree in international comparative studies, and has taught English in South Korea and Honduras, worked as a journalist in Santiago de Chile and studied in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

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