Chinese court to rule on Spavor, source says

DETAINED CANADIANS

BEIJING • A Chinese court is expected to rule as early as Wednesday in the case of detained Canadian Michael Spavor, according to a Canadian source directly familiar with the matter.

Spavor, a businessman, was charged with espionage in June last year along with fellow Canadian Michael Kovrig, at a time when relations between the two countries are at a very low level following Canada's arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in late 2018.

Kovrig and Spavor lived 1,000 km apart at the time of their arrest, and despite having met on brief occasions they were not in regular contact. Although Chinese authorities have never asserted their cases are connected, both just happened to be arrested within hours of one another, and to have their cases tried in the same week.

China has also insisted that the detention of Spavor and Kovrig is not connected to the arrest of Meng, who was taken into custody by RCMP in Vancouver on an international warrant issued by the United States. Nevertheless, in a June statement senior Chinese government spokesman Zhao Lijian said that if Canada stopped Meng's extradition proceedings it “could open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians.”

The case that most closely parallels “the two Michaels” is that of Kevin Garratt, a coffee shop operator in the Chinese city of Dandong who was detained along with his wife Julia on espionage charges in 2014. Their detention followed closely on the arrest in Richmond, B.C., of Su Bin, a Chinese national wanted by the United States for the alleged theft of military secrets.

Julia was soon freed on bail but Kevin spent two years in pretrial detention before he was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. Despite this, he was freed after a series of highlevel negotiations and returned to Canada just before a visit to Ottawa by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang.