A former Canadian envoy whose imprisonment in China kicked off a high-profile diplomatic spat has accused Chinese authorities of inflicting “psychological torture” on him.
Michael Kovrig says he was placed in solitary confinement for months and subjected to “relentless interrogation” when he was arrested in December 2018 and held for more than 1,000 days.
The spy was interrogated?
This kind of got brushed under the rug, but you might remember that China claimed they were both spy’s. The Canadian government denied this. Then it turns out kovrig was a spy, and he was accused of using the other Michael for espionage activity without his knowledge. That Michael, spavor, sued the Canadian government. The Canadian government settled for something like 7 million.
I guess if you’re legitimately a spy, you ought to expect some kind of unpleasant interrogation as an occupational hazard if you get caught. Otherwise don’t get caught.
There are better things to have a go at China for than “they do to spies what uh, we can’t prove we don’t also do”.
Has it turned out he was a spy?
Yup https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/21/canada-intelligence-program-danger-report-china-detention and Spavor was unwittingly being used by Kovrig for information gathering.
Goddamn! I just read the article. This hullabaloo really looked like naked hostage diplomacy at the time as the allegations sounded too convenient to be true. Actually both could be true - China could have known about these two and not cared till they had use for them. Still our (Canadian) authorities really made it sound the allegations were bullshit.
Meanwhile the reason China did use them was freaking insane. Can you imagine China arresting the CEO of Microsoft or BlackBerry? Two companies that for sure absolutely collaborate with western governments either by inserting backdoors or by giving them early access to zero days… Unpopular opinion here, but China is the rational actor in this affair.
Yes I would have also enjoyed if they arrested a western CEO instead of these patsies. The show would have been quite something. 😂