Kovrig is a senior advisor at the International Crisis Group and a former Canadian diplomat, but he is best known to Canadians as one of the “two Michaels” who were detained by Chinese authorities in 2018, in response to the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the Vancouver airport on a U.S. extradition request.

“I was detained by state security officers when I was coming back from dinner and they abducted me and held me hostage for 1,019 days,” said Kovrig. “I spent about nearly six months in solitary confinement, being relentlessly interrogated, and then another two years in a detention centre, confined to a single cell.

“It was a gruelling ordeal, not just for me, but for my family. And frankly, it’s something I’ve spent the last few years, as has my family, recovering fro

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