Canada’s ‘two Michaels’ back home after more than 1,000 days in Chinese jail, as Huawei’s Meng cuts deal with U.S.

The release of the “two Michaels” came shortly after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies, reached a deal with the U.S. Justice Department that allowed her to return to China in exchange for acknowledging some wrongdoing in a criminal case.

Canadian officials arrested Meng, 49, in Vancouver in December 2018, at the behest of U.S. officials who sought her extradition on bank and wire fraud charges related to allegations that she misled a bank about Huawei’s relationship with a subsidiary in Iran. Several days later, China detained Kovrig and Spavor in what was widely seen as tit-for-tat retaliation — and sent ties between Ottawa and Beijing into a sharp nosedive.

Trudeau, whose minority government was returned to office this week after a snap election, said in Ottawa that Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Spavor, a businessman, had boarded a plane leaving China at 7:30 p.m. Ottawa time. They were accompanied by Canada’s ambassador to China.

“These two men have gone through an unbelievably difficult ordeal,” Trudeau said. “For the past 1,000 days, they have shown strength, perseverance, resilience and grace, and we are all inspired by that.”

The prime minister, whose handling of the dispute has drawn critics from all sides of Canada’s political spectrum, said that there would be time to analyze his country’s relationship with China in the “coming days and weeks.”

Though China has repeatedly denied suggestions that there was a connection between Meng’s arrest and the detention of the two Canadians, a spokesman for Beijing’s foreign ministry said last year that releasing Meng could “open up space for resolution to the situation of the two Canadians.”

“By putting them on the plane tonight, they’ve clearly acknowledged that this was hostage taking,” Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat, told a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. news program. “And that’s something we’re going to have to be conscious of going forward.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that he welcomed the release of the two Canadians after “more than two-and-a-half years of arbitrary detention.”

Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times tabloid called Meng’s return symbolic progress toward a thawing of China’s relations with the United States and Canada. “After this, businesspeople on international trips should not be arrested for political reasons,” he wrote on social media. Chinese state media remained silent, however, about the release of the two Michaels.

Kovrig and Spavor had been held in separate Chinese prisons on vague charges of espionage and stealing state secrets for which China has not provided evidence. They were not afforded a bail hearing.

The two men were cut off from the outside world, allowed a handful of phone calls — combined — with their families. Kovrig passed the time by walking 7,000 steps in circles inside his cramped jail cell every day.

The two Michaels were tried separately in March in secret trials. Canadian diplomats were barred from attending them, in violation of a consular agreement between the two countries. A Chinese court found Spavor guilty in August and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. A verdict for Kovrig had not yet been announced before his release.

Meng, who appeared in a Brooklyn courtroom by video link, pleaded not guilty to bank and wire fraud charges on Friday. She agreed to a statement of facts, which said that she misled a bank about Huawei’s relationship with a subsidiary, effectively tricking it into clearing transactions in violation of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

U.S. prosecutors said that they would defer prosecution of the charges and drop them by Dec. 1, 2022, if Meng complied with the terms of the agreement. She did not have to pay a fine.

The deferred prosecution agreement is a “great deal” for Meng and a “bad deal” for the United States that “can only be justified by the humanitarian concern for Kovrig and Spavor,” said Julian Ku, a law professor at Hofstra University, adding that it still rewarded China for “hostage diplomacy.”

Such agreements are often used when the beneficiary is cooperating with prosecutors or has admitted wrongdoing by paying a fine, he said. Neither appeared to have happened in Meng’s case and because she was allowed to leave Canada for China, there was no threat of further prosecution to prevent potential future wrongdoing.

Chinese state media celebrated Meng’s return as a victory for Beijing’s diplomatic clout. Her release came after the “untiring efforts of the Chinese government,” wrote the official Xinhua News Agency.

In a letter written from the plane, Meng returned the sentiment. “Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, our motherland is becoming more glorious; without the might of the motherland, I would not have today’s freedom,” she wrote, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

China has cast the case against Meng as political in nature and part of a U.S. plot to hinder the country’s ascendance. But her cushy bail conditions — she enjoyed painting lessons at home and private shopping trips at Vancouver boutiques — drew unfavorable comparisons here with the circumstances in which the Michaels were being held.

Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, had been out on $8 million bail at the slightly larger of her two multi-million-dollar mansions in Vancouver, while she was fighting extradition to the United States. On Friday, the Justice Department withdrew its request and a judge in Vancouver dismissed the proceeding and vacated Meng’s bail conditions.

Meng departed for China on Friday evening, shortly after she spoke to reporters outside a Vancouver courthouse, saying her life had been “turned upside-down” over the past few years and thanking the Canadian government “for upholding the rule of law.”

The release of the two Michaels resolves one of Trudeau’s knottiest foreign policy headaches. Some opposition lawmakers had pressed him to take a harder line against China. Several prominent Canadians, including former foreign ministers, had urged him to release Meng, hoping it would spur China to release Kovrig and Spavor.

But Trudeau repeatedly rejected those calls, saying that doing so would send a signal to governments around the world that they could gain leverage over Canada by detaining its citizens. He has said that Meng’s case would be resolved by independent courts in Canada in accordance with the rule of law.

Comfort Ero, a senior executive at International Crisis Group, Kovrig’s employer, thanked Canada and the United States for their support.

“To the inimitable, indefatigable and inspiring Michael Kovrig, welcome home!” she said on Twitter.

Christian Shepherd and Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei, Lyric Li in Seoul, and Adela Suliman in London and Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.

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