Two short hours were enough in court Chinese of Dandong, Friday March 19, to judge the businessman Canadian Michael Spavor, 45, charged with theft of state secrets. The media and several diplomats, including a Frenchman, were banned from hearing. The verdict will be known later. It will probably be the same for the former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig, 49, tried Monday in Beijing.
A three-cushion billiard table
For observers, the date of their trials is not a coincidence. Friday, in Alaska, was also held a meeting – freezing – between the US Secretary of State and his Chinese counterpart. Because behind this spy case is playing a three-cushion billiards, against the backdrop of political and commercial tensions between Beijing, Ottawa and Washington.
The Canadians were arrested in December 2018, nine days after the arrest, at Vancouver airport, of Meng Wanzhou. The number 2 of the Chinese group Huawei was wanted by American justice for having circumvented the sanctions against Iran. No link between the two cases, swears Beijing, which yet immediately boycotted Canadian agricultural products …
Additional voltage
Meng Wanzhou lives, under an electronic bracelet, in a pretty villa in Vancouver, where she can move around. His extradition process to the United States is expected to be concluded in May.
In their Chinese jails, the daily life of “Two Michael”, as Canadians call them, is less brilliant. Deprived of contact with their relatives and their lawyers, they are only entitled to a monthly consular visit, interrupted nine months last year, officially because of Covid. Just do they know that 99% of spy cases in China end in convictions …
Outraged by their detention looking like “Retaliation”, Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien suggested a prisoner exchange in January. Ottawa refuses, deeming this practice unworthy of democratic countries. And the tension is still rising, Thursday: Meng Wanzhou accuses Canada of having destroyed messages sent to the US FBI by a policeman who had arrested her. One of them contained his phone password. Pure fabrication, according to the Canadian prosecution.
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