China Overturns Death Sentence for Canadian Schellenberg

China's Supreme People's Court has overturned a death sentence imposed on Canadian Robert Lloyd Schellenberg for drug trafficking, a ruling that signals a potential easing of long-standing tensions between Ottawa and Beijing.

The decision, announced on Friday, reverses a 2019 lower court judgment against Schellenberg, a 43-year-old resident of Abbotsford, British Columbia. He now faces a retrial in Liaoning province, where his original case was heard. According to his lawyer, Zhang Dongshuo, the penalty is unlikely to be reinstated at that level. Schellenberg has been in Chinese custody since his 2014 arrest on suspicion of involvement in a scheme to smuggle 222 kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in tires aboard a container ship bound for Australia. He has maintained his innocence, claiming he was in China as a tourist.

Schellenberg's initial conviction in 2018 resulted in a 15-year prison term. However, in January 2019, a retrial escalated the sentence to death, a move the court justified by deeming the prior punishment too lenient given his alleged central role in the operation. That ruling came amid heightened diplomatic friction following the December 2018 arrest in...