‘From hell to limbo’: Michael Kovrig describes more than a thousand days as China’s prisoner [Video]

On the evening of December 10, 2018, Michael Kovrig was out for dinner in Beijing with his six-months-pregnant partner, unaware it was the last time he’d enjoy her company for more than two and a half years.

Strolling home, the couple climbed a spiral staircase in front of his apartment building.

“And boom … I come out of the stairs and there’s a dozen men in black, cameras on them, dressed identically, but no … markings, no badges, no nothing, surrounding us, shouting in Chinese, ‘That’s him,'” he told CBC News Chief Correspondent Adrienne Arsenault in an exclusive interview airing Monday.

He said a woman stepped forward and held up a piece of paper he wasn’t given a chance to read.

“Apparently in Chinese it had a warrant for my arrest on it,” he said. “They grabbed me. They grabbed my phone so I couldn’t make a call. They pinned …