Reject Meng Wanzhou’s ‘exciting narrative’ of abuse, Canadian government lawyer tells extradition judge
- The Huawei executive’s claim of a US-Canada conspiracy to abuse her rights is based on no more than ‘speculation and innuendo’, a government submission says
- But Meng’s lawyers say her entitlements under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms have been so ‘egregiously’ damaged the only answer is to release her
The judge in Meng Wanzhou’s extradition hearing should reject the Huawei executive’s “exciting narrative” about a conspiracy by Canadian and US authorities to abuse her rights, and throw out an application to release her, a Canadian government lawyer told the hearing on Tuesday.
The abuse claims were based on nothing more than “speculation and innuendo”, according to a written submission by the government lawyers representing US interests in the case.
Meng’s lawyers have spent almost five days arguing in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver that she had suffered abuses to her Canadian charter rights so “egregious” that the only remedy was to halt proceedings and release her.
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These abuses, they said, were intended to assist the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in a “covert criminal investigation” of Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer, and included unlawful questioning of her by border officials and the seizure of her electronic devices and passwords.
Meng was arrested on December 1, 2018, at Vancouver’s airport on a US extradition warrant seeking her to face fraud charges in New York.
Government lawyer Robert Frater told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes on Tuesday that she was being presented with “two starkly different narratives”.