‘No evidence can help them:’ Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor will be found guilty by China, exiled lawyer says

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This article was published 17/03/2021 (1335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER—With the trials of two Canadians being held in China set to commence, experts warned Thursday to expect nothing other than a guilty verdict.

Teng Biao, who practised human rights law in China for 10 years and now lives in exile in New Jersey, said the trials of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor will be a “show trial” driven by politics rather than facts.

“In this kind of politically sensitive case the judges, the court, are not able to make the final decision,” Teng said. “We can say in these kinds of cases the court is only a political tool of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Kovrig and Spavor were arrested in December 2018, days after Canadian authorities took Meng Wanzhou, CFO of China’s tech giant Huawei, into custody in Vancouver on a request from the United States.

Meng is wanted on fraud charges in the U.S. related to a 2013 meeting with HSBC bank during which, it is alleged, she misled the bank about Huawei’s work through a company it owned called Skycom doing business in Iran in contravention of American sanctions.

She is fighting extradition while under house arrest in a home she owns in Vancouver. Observers have said the detention of Kovrig and Spavor is direct retaliation for Meng’s arrest, a charge Beijing denies. Ottawa has called their arrests “arbitrary.”

The men have been detained and charged with espionage-related crimes with little access to the outside world from their cells in China. Wednesday, Ottawa announced Spavor’s trial will start Friday, he is being held in Dandong. The trial of Kovrig, who is held in the Beijing area, will take place on Monday.

Ottawa says it is working to gain access to the trials.

Kovrig is a diplomat on leave who was working for Crisis Group, an organization helping to resolve conflicts around the world, at the time of his arrest. He is charged on suspicion of spying for state secrets and intelligence.

Spavor, a businessman who was operating from northern China stands accused of spying for a foreign entity and illegally providing state secrets. Authorities allege the men worked together.

Criminal trials in China are generally very short, said Teng, and won’t be open to the public.

“I have taken a few death penalty cases, which were very complicated, but the trial only lasted half a day or day,” he said.

Kovrig and Spavor will be able to present their own evidence, but barriers exist, Teng said. Witnesses are frequently not allowed to testify and documents, or other physical evidence, can be entered into the case but the judges “don’t care” about them when making their decision.

Teng has seen important evidence and legal arguments completely ignored in judge’s verdicts in the past and he said the same can be expected for Kovrig and Spavor.

“No evidence can help them,” he said. “It’s not a legal logic. It’s political logic.”

The trials could be just a single day or carry on a little longer, says another criminal and human rights lawyer in China who had his law license revoked recently for daring to defend a group of Hong Kong dissidents dubbed the Hong Kong 12.

He said the men could be looking at a sentence of anywhere from three to more than 10 years.

There is nothing different about trials for foreigners in China, Lu Siwei said in an interview. But because the trial of the two Canadians is a national security case they won’t even get to see the evidence against them, Lu said.

He said the political weight of the case is clear to see.

“International politics certainly had an impact in this case,” he said, “but because so little information is publicly available, it is impossible to judge the extent of that impact.”

Former Canadian ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques was involved when another Canadian, Kevin Garratt, was arrested in 2014 on espionage-related crimes. He was freed in 2016.

Saint-Jacques said what helped Garratt get his freedom was an upcoming meeting with Li Keqiang and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2016. He said at the time China wanted a free trade deal with Canada, among other things, making it easier to secure Garratt’s release. It’s different now.

“Right now we have no carrot,” Saint-Jacques said. “I don’t know what they would want to extract from us.”

Saint-Jacques predicts Spavor’s trial will be over in a day and Kovrig’s may take a little longer. China has accused the pair of working together with Spavor providing information to Kovrig.

Spavor was facilitating business between North Korea and other countries from his office in China’s northeastern city of Dandong, on the North Korean border, when he was arrested.

Saint-Jacques said there is no question what the verdict will be, but when the sentencing will happen is unknown, though he thinks it will be sooner rather than later.

This week high-level officials from the United States and China are meeting in Alaska for the first time since the Biden administration took over. Saint-Jacques has said the fate of the two men could be dealt with during that meeting, which could include renewed demands Meng is released.

“It depends on what they will want to extract from us or the Americans,” he said.

Correction — Mar. 19, 2021: This article was edited to correct the spelling of Li Keqiang.

Jeremy Nuttall is a Vancouver-based investigative reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @Nuttallreports