China hits back over Trudeau's criticism of spy case verdict
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Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou arriving at the court last week for her extradition hearing in Vancouver. The verdict in Canadian Michael Spavor's case in China comes as Meng's defence began a final effort to prevent her from being sent to the US to face fraud charges.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
OTTAWA • China denounced Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's comments as "extremely unreasonable, absurd and arrogant", as Beijing ramped up an eleventh-hour effort to prevent a Huawei executive's extradition to the United States.
The Chinese Embassy in Ottawa expressed its "great indignation and strongest condemnation" in a statement yesterday protesting against Mr Trudeau's criticism of an 11-year prison sentence for Canadian national Michael Spavor.
The Prime Minister had condemned the verdict in Spavor's politically charged spying trial on Wednesday as "absolutely unacceptable and unjust".
The embassy also pushed back against allegations that the prosecutions of Spavor and fellow Canadian Michael Kovrig were arbitrary detentions intended to pressure Ottawa to block the extradition of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou. The Chinese government views the case as a politically motivated attack on one of its chief technology champions.
"There is no such thing as 'arbitrary detention' at all," the embassy said of the Spavor case.
"On the contrary, the Canadian side, disregarding the political nature of the Meng Wanzhou incident and acting as an accomplice of the US side, has detained Ms Meng, an innocent Chinese citizen who violates no Canadian law at all, for nearly 1,000 days. This is arbitrary detention in every sense of the term."
A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington also criticised the US for "making reckless and irresponsible comments" on Spavor's case in a statement yesterday, and urged the American authorities "to unconditionally revoke Meng's extradition".
Spavor and Kovrig were detained by China's top spy agency in December 2018, days after Meng's arrest in Vancouver, and the Chinese government has advanced their prosecutions in tandem with Meng's extradition fight.
The Spavor verdict came just as Meng's defence began a final effort to prevent her from being sent to the US to face fraud charges. The timing of Kovrig's verdict remains unclear.
Diplomats from 25 countries, including Japan, Germany and Britain, gathered at the Canadian Embassy before Spavor's verdict, in a gesture that Canadian Ambassador Dominic Barton said showed Beijing "that all the eyes of the world are watching".
The Chinese Embassy dismissed the diplomatic show of solidarity with Canada as an attempt at "megaphone diplomacy" by a "handful of diplomats from Western countries".
BLOOMBERG
