Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou and her defence team are attending hearings in a Canadian courtroom via telephone for the second day today, hoping to convince a judge to release documents they believe could prove she was a victim of misconduct.
Meng, 48, was arrested in December 2018 at Vancouver International Airport on a U.S. warrant charging her with bank fraud for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.
She has said she is innocent, and is fighting extradition to the United States while under house arrest in Vancouver.
During hearings at British Columbia’s Supreme Court on Monday Meng’s lawyers argued that alleged abuses of process on the part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) officers who detained and arrested her meant that the Crown should not be able to shield certain details of their planning from public view.
Meng’s defence team argues that Canadian and American authorities committed abuses of process while questioning Meng before her arrest, including the improper sharing of identifying details about her electronic devices.
Her lawyers also suggested documents disclosed to the defence in recent months suggest U.S. authorities were still interested in obtaining information related to Meng’s laptop, phones and tablet more than two months after she was arrested on an extradition warrant — despite the Crown’s insistence that those details were never shared with American law enforcement.
Meng’s lawyers claim U.S. and Canadian authorities conspired to violate her rights at the time of her arrest by having the CBSA detain and question her without a lawyer and seize her electronic devices.
Meng’s legal team argues that her extradition proceedings should be stayed as a result.
The RCMP have denied any abuses.
Lawyers representing David Lametti, Canada’s justice minister and attorney general, have handed over some documents requested by Meng’s lawyers, but have declined to release others on the basis of privilege, a claim which is being argued in court this week.
Several of the privilege claims were litigated in a federal court in Ottawa in late July, because they were made on the basis of national security.
The hearings in Vancouver are expected to last five days. A schedule proposed jointly by lawyers for the prosecution and defense said that a decision on the issue by Oct. 2 would allow the rest of the trial to proceed as planned, with hearings wrapping up in April 2021.
With files from Jason Proctor of CBC News and Reuters
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