A court in China sentenced a Canadian businessman, Michael Spavor, to 11 years in prison after declaring him guilty of spying on Wednesday, deepening a split with Canada, which has condemned the case as political hostage-taking.
Mr. Spavor has the right to appeal the judgment, but Chinese courts rarely overturn criminal judgments, and his fate could rest on deal-making among Beijing, Ottawa and Washington at a time when Beijing’s relations with Western powers are particularly tense. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, in a statement, denounced Mr. Spavor’s sentence as “absolutely unacceptable and unjust.”
In a brief online statement, the court in Dandong, a northeast Chinese city next to North Korea where Mr. Spavor had often done business, also said that he would be deported, but gave no details about the timing. The court said it had found Mr. Spavor guilty of obtaining state secrets and providing them to a foreign recipient, but offered no details.
