This is the best summary I could come up with:
A simmering diplomatic feud prompted by China’s detention of two Canadian citizens has been reopened after one of the men claimed he was arrested for unknowingly passing on intelligence to Canada and its allies.
The two men were arrested in 2018 shortly after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained in Canada in connection with possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran.
Chinese officials said Spavor – who lived near the North Korean border and arranged cultural exchanges – was supplying intelligence to Kovrig, who took leave from working as a diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing from 2012 to 2014 to take a job at the International Crisis Group.
The two men were freed by China in September of that year, after Meng Wanzhou reached a deal with US prosecutors and was released, capping a standoff that lasted more than 1,000 days.
In a statement to the Guardian, the global affairs department said the detention of the two men was “unjust and unacceptable” and their trials “did not satisfy even the minimum standards” under international law.
On social media, former ambassador Kerry Buck, who also served assistant deputy minister for international security, called Spavor’s allegations “ridiculous”.
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If anyone has actually done some digging into the backgrounds of the two Michaels, this shouldn’t be at all surprising. Either China accidentally found the two most suspicious Canadians in China, China intentionally found the two most suspicious Canadians in China explicitly to unfairly detain them despite knowing that nobody would believe the justification anyway, or the two most suspicious Canadians in China were either spies or unwitting spies.
Kovrig is a “former diplomat and current geopolitical analyst working with the International Crisis Group.” His work involves “splitting his time between Hong Kong and Beijing offices and travelling around the the east Asia region for research.”
Spavor is “director and founder of Paektu Cultural Exchange, an NGO that facilitates cultural exchange with North Korea.” His work involves constantly crossing into and out of North Korea and he supposedly has connections with Kim Jong-Un as well as high-level officials in the DPRK government.
If you’ve read any of the public reports on typical covers given to spies, this should be raising so many red flags.