A Canadian citizen convicted of drug smuggling in China has been sentenced to death by a court in Dalian that overturned a 15-year sentence deemed too lenient by prosecutors.
The harsher sentencing marks an escalation in tension between China and Canada after Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, was detained in Vancouver last month.
Robert Lloyd Schellenberg was arrested in 2014 and tried in 2016 before being sentenced last November to a15-year term in prison. His appeal was rejected last December, with prosecutors then alleging new evidence showed Schellenberg had played a central role in a failed smuggling plot to ship methamphetamine to Australia.