Canadian sentenced to death in China for drug smuggling

BEIJING: A Chinese court yesterday sentenced a Canadian man to death for drug smuggling after prosecutors said an original 15-year sentence, announced in November, was too lenient.

Dalian Intermediate People’s Court in the northeast province of Liaoning retried Robert Lloyd Schellenberg and handed down the death penalty, the court said in a brief statement on its website.

The case is likely again to test relations between Beijing and Ottawa, which have been tense since Canada’s arrest of a Chinese executive at the request of the United States in December, followed by China’s detention of two Canadian citizens on suspicion of endangering state security.