DANDONG, China (Reuters) – A Canadian detained by China more than two years ago on suspicion of espionage, Michael Spavor, was due to go on trial on Friday, a case seen in Ottawa and Washington as part of a wider diplomatic spat with Beijing.
A senior Canadian embassy official said he and other diplomats were denied access to the trial in the northeastern city of Dandong on national security grounds and expressed disappointment at what he has called a lack of transparency in the case.
China arrested Spavor and fellow Canadian Michael Kovrig in December 2018, soon after Canadian police detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of telecoms equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, on a U.S. warrant.
Beijing insists the detentions are not linked to the arrest of Meng, who remains under house arrest in Vancouver as she fights extradition to the United States.
Kovrig, a former diplomat, is due to go on trial on Monday in Beijing.
Police set up a cordon on Friday morning outside the Dandong Intermediate People’s Court, which sits along the Yalu River opposite North Korea, the isolated country that Spavor regularly visited in his business career.
Just before 9 am (0100GMT), court vans with a police car escort arrived at the court house, though it was not possible to see if Spavor was in any of the vehicles.
Officials from the Canadian embassy waited outside the court as they sought access to the building for the hearing, but had not received permission. The trial was scheduled to start at 10 am local time (0200 GMT).
“The embassy has made requests to the Chinese authorities on several occasions to gain access to Michael Spavor prior to the trial, (but we) have not yet had access to him,” Jim Nickel, Charge d’affaires of the Canadian Embassy in China, told reporters. Canadian officials last saw Spavor on Feb. 3, he added.Nickel said both the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the bilateral agreement between China and Canada required the Chinese authorities to grant access to the trial.
The trial dates were announced by Canada just as the United States and China were preparing to hold high-level talks in Alaska, the first since U.S. President Joe Biden took office, which have proven to be contentious.
China on Thursday denied the trials are linked to those talks.