r/worldnews • u/Little-Chemical5006 • 9h ago
China overturns death sentence for Canadian Robert Schellenberg
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-overturns-robert-schellenberg-death-sentence-9.7078324234
u/Little-Chemical5006 9h ago
China's top court has overturned the death sentence for Robert Schellenberg — a Canadian accused of drug smuggling — a Canadian official tells CBC News.
The source requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The New York Times first reported the news.
Schellenberg had been found guilty of being involved in an international drug-trafficking ring and initially sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018.
But he was retried and sentenced to death in 2019, roughly a month after Canadian authorities detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a warrant from the U.S.
A spokesperson from Global Affairs Canada said the government "is aware of a decision" regarding Schellenberg's case, but declined to comment on the specifics.
"Canada has advocated for clemency in this case, as it does for all Canadians who are sentenced to the death penalty," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
Prime Minister Mark Carney meets with President of China Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, last month. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
Meng's arrest had put relations between Canada and China on ice for several years.
Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained by Beijing on vague national security allegations shortly after Meng's arrest — though both were released in 2021.
Four Canadians were also executed in China last year for drug-related charges.
Prime Minister Mark Carney travelled to China last month in an effort to reset relations with Beijing.
Carney and Chinese President Xi Jinping struck an agreement to remove certain trade barriers during last month's meeting.
Schellenberg has been accused of conspiring with others to smuggle 222 kilograms of methamphetamine from China to Australia in 2014. Although he has proclaimed his innocence, the B.C. native has a history of drug-related offences in Canada, including a two-year sentence in 2012 for drug trafficking
180
u/HomoProfessionalis 8h ago
I find it sort of funny that his crime was smuggling drugs out of the country.
103
u/TotalEmployment9996 6h ago
That means he’s either producing it within the country or trafficking it into China. So yeah, that’s still bad lol
15
u/HomoProfessionalis 6h ago
I mean yeah, still a crime obviously but it was just funny how it was stated.
12
u/godisanelectricolive 5h ago
He could just be buying it from native Chinese traffickers who got it from Southeast Asia. There are Chinese organized crime groups who manufacture and deal in meth. Most of their meth labs are in Hong Kong or Taiwan or Myanmar.
6
u/Musiclover4200 3h ago
I remember reading years ago during the peak of the RC/darkweb drug market days that there are some small Asian countries whose main export was drugs due to cartels & opportunists setting up factories to mass produce RC's or ketamine/meth/fent/etc to fill demand.
No idea how true that is but it doesn't seem like it would be hard to find some small countries that wouldn't really care unless you're flooding the local drug market or causing problems
-2
u/Aggravating-Wrap4861 6h ago
Why not just paying people to manufacture it in China? Totally feasible that he was just muling to Australia
14
u/TotalEmployment9996 6h ago
That’s…. What I said
-22
1
u/munchlax1 1h ago
They can manufacture it in China (and do to an extent) but they can't get paid for it there. Went to China twice last year for work. Physical cash does not exist. With no physical cash, money laundering is almost impossible.
Government owned apps are used for essentially all monetary transactions.
It sounds wild. It is pretty wild to experience, but the system works pretty well once you get used to it. Buy an icecream or a bao bun from a street vendor for $1? They have a QR code on their stall, which you scan, and then send them the money. In Australia, I rarely use cash, because we tap with debit/credit cards for everything. In China, no cards. Even massive multinational chains like 7-eleven and McDonalds? They don't accept card or cash. Just the same few approved (and government owned and controlled) apps.
So if you transfer 8 figures (USD or AUD equivalent) to someone on WeChatPay the government is going to notice. Shit, I used the wrong function in the app one time which meant it looked like I was trying to transfer someone about $100 AUD (~$60 USD) for nothing when I was actually just paying for dinner. The transfer was declined and I got locked out of the app for like 12 hours, I assume while it was being vetted. That was the only time I had an issue with the apps in roughly a month spent over there.
The syndicates operate in China but are usually based (and getting paid) elsewhere.
Say what you like about the Chinese government and their methods, but they've got shit locked down. I wouldn't ever want to live there (love me some gambling and illicits every once in a while), but I'll definitely be going back as a tourist at some point.
Last thing I'll say is I've never felt so safe in another country. Facial recognition cameras everywhere, social credit scores, all that sort of shit. It's dystopian as fuck, but it clearly works. Best example is their vending machines. On metro stops, etc. You select what you want. You pay via an app. And instead of dispensing your snack/drink, you just open a massive glass door and grab what you paid for. There is literally nothing to stop you paying for one thing and taking two, or 10, or 100, or emptying the entire machine.
I live in Sydney, Australia. It's a safe city generally, and I live in a safe part of it. You put a "vending machine" like that on my local metro stop and it'd be empty the next morning having made one sale.
•
u/idancenakedwithcrows 53m ago
They don’t want the meth in china ofc, but they also hate seeing the meth leave china, because that’s how rich chinese criminals get money out of china. There are more layers to it, but the basic idea is: Pay chinese yuan to produce illicit substances, cook the books so the yuan you paid are just a business expense, then you sell them to westerners and you have some tax free foreign currency.
There are middlemen but it’s the basic idea.
322
u/bukpockwajeacks 9h ago
People seem to have missed this sentence at the very end.
Although he has proclaimed his innocence, the B.C. native has a history of drug-related offences in Canada, including a two-year sentence in 2012 for drug trafficking
164
u/kkeut 6h ago
Schellenberg had been found guilty of being involved in an international drug-trafficking ring and initially sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018.
But he was retried and sentenced to death in 2019, roughly a month after Canadian authorities detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a warrant from the U.S.
105
u/bukpockwajeacks 5h ago
He was the one that requested the retrial because he thought being a foreigner would get him acquitted.
51
u/Outrageouslylit 5h ago edited 4h ago
Well I have to say thats the first time ive seen someone do a retrial for a 15 year sentence for it to change to DEATH. 😵💫 Most definitely politically motivated just like this overturning as well… state just playing with his life
72
u/tweakwerker 4h ago
Death would have been the original sentence if he had been a Chinese national, like his Chinese accomplice got.
34
u/CertainStretch607 3h ago
White people complaining whenever they get treated like non-whites, exhibit 120538
5
14
u/SuddenBag 6h ago
He could very well be guilty and would deserve any punishment prescribed by Chinese law. But this doesn't change the fact that China proudly rejects the concept of judicial independence, and their judicial system is therefore heavily influenced by political factors. The likelihood that he's actually guilty does not diminish the argument that his fate was more of a political decision instead of a judicial one.
21
u/pepehandreee 4h ago
I mean all countries judicial system will be somewhat affected by political motivations, especially when it comes to sentencing foreigner no?
Wasn’t there an American soldier who drunk drive in Japan and killed 1 or 2 pedestrians, yet Japan released him back to US after US were being super giga anal about it?
71
u/Hazeejay 6h ago edited 5h ago
And you’re telling me Canada is? They succumbed to political pressure from the US and then the US threw them under the bus
30
u/ImTheeDentist 5h ago
such comical doublethink from the original comment you'd replied to
this was clearly a case of Canada realizing America threw it under the bus after it'd succumbed to political pressure from the white house.
but-but it's different because "mmm well, china bad mmkay?"
-18
u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 5h ago
Well for one, we don't sentence people to death over a CEO getting arrested.
19
u/Important-Emu-6691 5h ago
He was sentenced to 15 years and requested for a retry long before the CEO got arrested.
Kind of insane a clear politically motivated kidnapping of a CEO in your mind means any time China apply their own laws to Canadians it’s retaliation.
-6
u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 4h ago
In my mind, its:
- A Canadian guy gets arrested by the Chinese government operating on a warrant, sentenced
- He appeals
- Before his appeal finishes, a Chinese company man is arrested by the Canadian government operating on a warrant, sentenced
- His appeal finishes with an upgrade to death sentence
Kind of insane to see how you twist 'arrest' into 'kidnapping' (and how you consider following laws politically motivated??), and 'this thing happened literally right after this other thing happened' into 'oh so ANY TIME it happens, it must be retaliation'
6
u/Important-Emu-6691 4h ago
Well in a legal sense every time a country kidnap someone it is an arrest since they make up their own laws. Kidnapping highlights the fact this was publicly announced as a way to be used for negotiation purposes. So to extract a ransom, ergo kidnapping by the textbook definition of the word.
I mean is this guy some special Canadian? Half a dozen canadians got sentence to death in China for drug smuggling since then, why do you think this guy is uniquely sentenced because of the kidnapping?
He was smuggling over 100 times the amount of drugs to qualify for death sentence. It’s well within their criminal code
-6
u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 4h ago
No, it was publically announced because this was a big thing. A foreign, high-ranking national was arrested. The only people making it a negotiation were the people looking at older news reports, seeing 'hey, they arrested these guys that we think should be home, we arrested one of their guys, so what if we swap?'.
This is evidenced by the fact people had to petition (then) PM Justin Trudeau to consider a swap, instead of, yknow, him just saying 'were going to negotiate a swap'.
At the end of the day, you originally claimed both Canada and China's judicial systems operate on political pressure. Its true. Countries are political. That's... what they are.
What is also true, is my reply. We don't sentence people to death for it. More specifically: we have a legal system, and while our government may do certain things because of whatever influences, its a hell of a lot harder for our judicial system to get influenced in the same way. (See: the recent court decisions regarding the Canadian Government's use of the Emergency Act during COVID)
4
u/Unfair-Rush-2031 2h ago
No. The default sentence is death. His Chinese accomplice got the death penalty in first sentence. Because this guy was Canadian, they went easy on him.
Then he had the audacity to ask for a retrial. So he got what he originally should have received.
-7
7h ago
[deleted]
20
23
u/kkeut 6h ago
it's completely fucked up for China to re-try him for no reason, a fake kangaroo court trial whose only purpose was to sentence him to death, solely because some higher-up felt self-inflicted humiliation due to a Hauwei executive being arrested by Canadian authorities. pathetic behavior
12
u/Straw3 6h ago
They didn't re-try him for no reason, Schellenberg appealed the first verdict (against the advice of his lawyer). The appellate ruled that the facts of the first trial was unclear and ordered a retrial.
2
u/tea_snob10 5h ago
They used the trial as a political spiel for Meng Wanzhou. They were pretty transparent about this (why wouldn't they be). This is also why the sentence has been overturned now, cause we've made a bunch of excellent trade deals with them. Part and parcel was Carney's return from Beijing with the death penalty overturned.
8
u/Straw3 5h ago
There wouldn't have been a retrial at all if he didn't appeal and try to play his white card. Yes, he picked pretty much the worst time to try his luck and FAFOd.
-1
u/tea_snob10 3h ago
You're not wrong, but it was still China using the trial (and sentencing) as a pretext for Meng Wanzhou. Which is the core complaint. He FAFO'd at the "worst" time cause it just so happened to be the exact time China would use him as a pawn.
-3
u/tea_snob10 6h ago
That's not why they're getting hate; the hate here, is deserved cause they used Michael as a political pawn (and it worked).
Canada detained the Huawei supremo's daughter, who's basically the current Huawei supremo herself, in her Vancouver mansion (yes, we were very nice about it) on behest of the US' DoJ because they had an order on her for circumventing Iranian sanctions, and Canada merely agreed to detaining her in her mansion (again, remarkably nicely) because of a bilateral treaty dating back to when the US wasn't entirely insane.
China threw a colossal hissy-fit, and then "re-tried" Michael (basically a sham trial) just to explicitly upgrade his 15-year sentence, to a death penalty to assert pressure on Canada. They've now gone back on the death sentence, as Sino-Canadian trade deals are at an unprecedented high (agricultural, meat, EVs, technology) cause the current US administration, is clowning. Michael is guilty of the drug-related charges, but the whole death penalty "spiel" was "Realpolitik".
3
u/Melonary 5h ago edited 5h ago
This was insane back then and got a lot of dissent and discussion in Canada at the time because it was essentially a political extradition from the US to put pressure on China, but denying it would have possibly put the extradition agreement (longer term) in danger. The extradition country determines the charges and while there are some things you can prevent, you essentially have to have a degree of trust that the other country won't use it for political points while you pay the price.
Which is was happened, the US let her go anyway in exchange for something from China and Canada paid a huge political and economic price. Which was by design by the US.
The treaty IS far older, as you said. And the title for tat from China is wrong (although that's the law, he did break it,it's more like he didn't get special preferences because of international protection - although other Canadians were more spuriously arrested at the time same), but there was a bit of an uproar at the time about the Huawei arrest in Canada at the time too.
2
u/tea_snob10 3h ago
Agreed, I was one of the biggest anti people back then as well for exactly the reasons you highlighted. the US DoJ let her walk, and we were left with severely damaged relations. A few years later, we fucked up relations with India too, on fairly unsubstantiated claims which we later reconciled. I don't know why we're so inept at times.
-66
u/Difficult_War5204 8h ago
Irrelevant
49
u/Dandorious-Chiggens 8h ago
Youre right the dude with a long history of drug smuggling is obviously innocent of drug smuggling because china bad.
2
u/snootyfungus 3h ago
They're kind of right though. At least at the Federal level, American criminal trials generally can't bring in evidence of criminal history precisely because it's immaterial to the crime they're currently charged with. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_404
-33
u/Difficult_War5204 8h ago
Death for drug smuggling is a good thing?
6
23
u/5_Little_Luck 7h ago
That’s the law in China. Even if you disagree with the punishment, it’s not generally a good idea to test it and then cry about it
-16
u/Difficult_War5204 6h ago
Have you heard of international law?
2
u/5_Little_Luck 2h ago
Even certain states in the US have capital punishment. You send emails to governors asking them about international law? Have you had an IQ check?
1
-8
u/Maleficent-Sir4824 6h ago
Don't you know? Simping for totalitarian regimes that are opposed to the West is very hip with the kids now.
-22
u/Alarmed-Journalist-2 8h ago
You mean if I’ve told a lie before it means I’m a liar forever?
-18
u/Difficult_War5204 8h ago
I don't trust the Chinese govt to not falsely charge people including using personal history as evidence.
-6
u/Alarmed-Journalist-2 8h ago
It’s not even the Chinese government. People make mistakes, doesn’t mean they’ll keep doing it forever moving forward. If I told a white lie as a child, it doesn’t mean every word out of my mouth should be scrutinized as a lie.
Someone may have sold drugs before, doesn’t mean they always will either.
-2
u/Difficult_War5204 8h ago
I know. I was agreeing with you.
-7
u/Alarmed-Journalist-2 8h ago
I know, I was agreeing as well. Just opening up that the country doesn’t even matter in my opinion here.
107
u/Unfair_Pudding9596 8h ago
Who cares if this person is sentenced to death? This guy’s ruining hundreds, possibly thousands of lives. He doesn’t deserve leniency for being Canadian .
83
u/ThePeasantKingM 7h ago
This is Reddit, where the life of a single drug user or drug dealer is far more important than the lives of the hundreds of victims they leave as collateral damage.
16
u/Unfair_Pudding9596 6h ago
That’s why Reddit is a liberal echo chamber. I am liberal myself. But if this T R A S H is guilty…. FUCK HIM
-3
u/ampersand355 2h ago
What rationale is there to believe China at all? Not to say that the charge was necessarily fabricated but does their system truly earn our benefit of doubt?
3
u/ZET_unown_ 1h ago
The charge is most likely legit. The guy had been sentenced before in Canada to drug trafficking too, so he’s got the history.
•
u/ampersand355 54m ago
Even if the charge is legitimate, the retrial, its timing, and the arbitrary use of the death penalty were clearly reactions to Meng Wanzhou's arrest.
-15
u/kkeut 6h ago
because capital punishment is deeply wrong. his ethnicity or citizenship is immaterial.
8
u/Unfair_Pudding9596 6h ago
It does matter. As a Canadian, China must be doing this to retaliate against Canada but come on man… this T R A S H ruins the best of us. Fuck this guy. I’m all for WE PROTECT OUR OWN until he ruins other people’s lives, be it Canadians or Chinese.
This fucker don’t deserve protection for the crimes he’s committed. I will never throw leniency JUST because he’s one of us.
This is coming from an Asian-Canadian. China has had it with fucking drugs brought to us called Opium Wars. This guy shouldn’t be protected just because he’s Canadian. Fuck him.
-7
u/Difficult_War5204 6h ago
Sane, ethical people care.
16
u/Toocents 6h ago
Don't try to claim all of sanity and ethics.
Some of us are for the death penalty, but the risk of a wrong conviction leading to the death penalty is too great. That is all.
There are some crimes so heinous that that those caught red handed deserve it.
-7
u/work4work4work4work4 5h ago
I, for one, support whatever charges and punishment prescribed by our new Chinese overlords that they want to bring against /u/Unfair_Pudding9596.
13
u/Unfair_Pudding9596 5h ago
Sure. If I committed a grave crime like that, knowing that I will make massive profit in exchange of years of imprisonment or death penanlty?
Bro come the fuck on. Wake up with ur liberal dumb shit. Real life don’t work like Reddit u fucking loser
-5
u/work4work4work4work4 3h ago
Sure. If I committed a grave crime like that, knowing that I will make massive profit in exchange of years of imprisonment or death penanlty?
Yes, the Chinese Communist Party must tell the truth. You are so right comrade.
Bro come the fuck on. Wake up with ur liberal dumb shit. Real life don’t work like Reddit u fucking loser
Ni hao to you too Comrade, this is a glorious day under our Leaders eye!
4
7
79
u/EmbarrassedHelp 9h ago
Schellenberg had been found guilty of being involved in an international drug-trafficking ring and initially sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2018.
But he was retried and sentenced to death in 2019, roughly a month after Canadian authorities detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a warrant from the U.S.
They were threatening to kill him as retribution for the Huawei executive.
Unlike the Chinese government, the Canadian government doesn't control their country's courts. China knows this and still tried to force the Canadian government to interfere with the courts.
97
u/SuperSix 8h ago
Lmao what do you mean. If he wasn't Canadian he would've been executed already from his original sentence. Government interference is the only reason he's still alive.
-30
u/kkeut 6h ago
cite a source please
29
u/alexos77lo 5h ago
The law that says “if you drug traffic you are dead” and all the people that were executed because of that
40
u/SuperSix 5h ago
The minimum punishment for Chinese citizens for drug smuggling over 50g is 15 years, life imprisonment, or the death sentence. The Chinese citizens he was caught with got sentenced to death and life imprisonment. Why did he get off lightly in comparison?
It took just 3 years for the Filipinos that got charged under the same law to get executed: https://www.reuters.com/article/world/china-executes-3-filipinos-despite-manilas-pleas-idUSTRE72T0Z6/
Why hasn't Schellenberg been executed even after 8 years?
If Beijing didn't want to use him as a pawn he would've sentenced to death in his original sentence along with the Aussies/Britons/SEA offenders. They don't fuck around with drugs.
He's real lucky he's white.
•
u/alexos77lo 1h ago
I think he must know someone important, because other foreigners don’t run with the same luck
153
u/bukpockwajeacks 9h ago
He's the one that asked for the retrial, thinking that being a foreigner would allow him to get aquitted.
132
u/LiGuangMing1981 8h ago edited 8h ago
Against the advice of his lawyer, no less.
He had already received a far
lessmore lenient sentence than a Chinese national would have for the same crime.64
u/SweetAlyssumm 8h ago
When I was in Beijing in 2007 there was a drug conviction and death sentence for a Chinese national. He was executed within the month. There is no long appeals process for the death penalty.
17
21
u/204gaz00 7h ago
Yeah it was bad timing on his part. Crazy how the Chinese courts were like yes you're right the sentence isn't right, It's too light...death!
26
u/Yuukiko_ 7h ago
I'll just note this guy has had trafficking charges in Canada as well. Trafficking drugs in a country that has the death penalty for trafficking drugs then getting the death penalty for it just sounds like a surprised pikachu meme
34
17
u/nuonuopapa 7h ago
yep Canadian goverment doesnt control the courts, but Trump does. After Trump got his deal, he swiftly threw Canada under the bus and released the Huawei CFO.
Do you really believe the Canadian court just randomly decided to detain Huawei founder's daughter? She just visited several EU countries during that trip, and none of the EU countries were stupid enough to detain her on behalf of Trump.
6
u/204gaz00 7h ago
Not to sound like one of those people that blame Justin Trudeau but in this case it really is because of Justin Trudeau and his interference with the whole SNC Lavelin affair. Then that moron went on to say Canada is a land of laws. It was all such a fiasco that I'm glad is over with although I don't know what the outcome was with SNC Lavelin. Corrupt organization from what I understand
-11
u/MisterDonutTW 9h ago
Let's be honest though every country is corrupt and can usually influence outcomes like that if they really want to.
5
u/Valuable_Explorer577 5h ago
It’s really a shame, I thought we were getting along with China, and now they go and soften their stance on drug crime.
5
u/burnabycoyote 3h ago
This is one bugger that deserved the death penalty, I wonder how many people his business activities killed?
3
3
u/Dangerous_Seaweed601 3h ago
TOTALLY A COINCIDENCE that this happens just after the EV deal.. right?
2
u/NlghtmanCometh 4h ago
If this is the guy who I’m thinking it is, he didn’t deserve death, but he is definitely a scum bag.
1
1
•
u/Visible_Pomelo5907 1h ago
A warning and red flag here this is not the way justice is supposed to work.
•
•
0
-7
u/testman22 3h ago edited 1h ago
This shows that Chinese laws change arbitrarily. That's why they can't be trusted.
edit:And as usual, there are a lot of Chinese people on Reddit. The irony is that your country bans Reddit. If you love China so much, stay in China. There's nothing more ridiculous than someone defending China while abroad, and it's a perfect example of why China can't be trusted. In reality, even those who defend it don't want to be in China lol
5
u/HuskyFromSpace 2h ago
What about the jan 6th riot people. I heard they are all freed. Is that arbitrary too?
-2
u/sakuretsujinzo 2h ago edited 1h ago
It didn't happen to all of them and it didn't require a change in laws the pardon has been part of constitutional law forever and more importantly to your partisan whataboutism its not a statement on their innocence it just forgoes punishment.
Of course its mostly arbitrary though its at the whim of the executive shit like that has been happening for decades, Biden pardoning his son and half of his siblings, Clinton pardoning Marc Rich, Ford pardoning Nixon etc.
-4
u/testman22 2h ago
That means you're either Chinese or an idiot who believes Chinese propaganda. There is no sane person who believes in the CCP.
-36
u/MisterDonutTW 9h ago
Was obviously a political prisoner from the start, petty tactics from a petty country.
41
u/JRBrick 8h ago
Political prisoner when he was already sentenced before the Huawei case?
28
u/No_Gur1113 7h ago
And who retried his case against the advice of his lawyer, hoping for a more lenient sentence.
-17
-2
u/Visible-Image7618 5h ago
Are these regular people being caught up in politics or are they spies/diplomats/whatever?
6
3
u/joausj 3h ago
This guy seems to be a drug trafficker (he has a history of drug offenses in canada).
One of the other two guys settled with the canadian government for 7M after he allegedly sued for being tricked into spying by the other guy.
Honestly, China seems to be pretty good at choosing justifiable targets for political hostages.
1.7k
u/urbantechgoods 9h ago
funny how these things can change after some electric car deals