China frees Canada’s ‘two Michaels’, jailed for more than 1,000 days, after Huawei’s Meng cuts deal with U.S.

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 Dominic Barton, 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 for “reflections and analysis” on his country’s relationship with China in the “coming days and weeks.”

“The fact of the matter is I know Canadians will be incredibly happy to know, right now, this Friday night, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are on a plane and they’re coming home,” he said.

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.”

The timing of the release — hours after Meng reached a deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. officials to resolve the criminal charges against her — appeared to buttress the argument made by Canada and many of its allies that China’s detention of the two Michaels was arbitrary.

“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.”

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 Skycom — a company that it controlled and operated that did business in Iran — effectively tricking it into violating 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.

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.

Trudeau had been leaning on allies, including the United States, to help resolve the dispute.

Comfort Ero, a senior executive at 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.

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