China overturns death sentence for Canadian in drug case

China has overturned the death sentence of Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, in a possible sign of a diplomatic thaw as Prime Minister Mark Carney seeks to boost trade ties with Beijing.



Schellenberg was detained on drug charges in 2014 before China–Canada ties nosedived following the 2018 arrest in Vancouver of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou.



That arrest infuriated Beijing, which detained two Canadians - Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig - on espionage charges that Ottawa condemned as retaliatory.



Then, in January 2019, a court in northeast China retried Schellenberg, who was 36 at the time, sentencing him to death while declaring that his 15 year prison term for drug trafficking had been too lenient.



The court said he had been a central player in a scheme to ship narcotics to Australia, in a one-day retrial that Amnesty International called "a flagrant violation of international law".