Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers accuse Canadian officers of deception, and working for FBI, in fullest account of Huawei CFO’s airport arrest

The defence says Meng's arrest was deliberately delayed by hours, during which she was subjected to a lengthy border inspection

They say this was an unlawful attempt to gather evidence in the US case against her

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Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is seen in a security video (left) on December 1 at the Vancouver airport, and outside the British Columbia Supreme Court on December 11 after being freed on bail. Photos: BC Supreme Court / CTV

Published: 7:17am, 22 Aug 2019Updated: 5:54am, 25 Dec 2021

Three Canadian border officers stood on the Vancouver International Airport jetway as passengers began marching out of Cathay Pacific Flight 838 on December 1 after the long journey from Hong Kong. It was 11.15am.

According to a police description they had received, the officers were waiting for a woman in a “white T-shirt (lettering)/dark pants/white shoes/carrying large purse/bag”. This was Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.

Among the details from the fullest account of events leading up to Meng’s arrest at the airport that day – a moment that would reverberate through US-China relations and trigger a full-blown diplomatic crisis between China and Canada – was that one of the officers, Scott Kirkland, was carrying two “Faraday bags”, according to her lawyers. The shiny Mylar receptacles are designed to prevent wireless access to electronic devices and prevent them being illicitly wiped or altered.

The border officers wanted Meng’s phones, her lawyers say, as part of a “covert criminal investigation” being conducted on behalf of the American FBI, but under the guise of a routine Canadian border examination.

Meng’s formal arrest was being deliberately delayed, the lawyers say, to assist evidence-gathering efforts that they described as an “abuse of process”.