Donald Trump wanted ‘ransom’ for Meng Wanzhou, lawyer tells extradition case
- The former US president’s attitude towards the Huawei executive was ‘the very definition of ransom’, says lawyer Richard Peck
- Peck calls for Meng’s extradition case to be stayed, but Canadian government lawyers say nothing justifies such an ‘extraordinary remedy’
The extradition case was “antithetical to Canadian values” and rule of law, Richard Peck told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
The abuse of process Meng had suffered at the hands of Trump and others was so severe the proceedings should be halted, releasing her, said Peck, who has argued some of Canada’s most high-profile and controversial cases.
Canadian government lawyers representing US interests in the case have said Meng failed to demonstrate wrongdoing by the US, and nothing to justify the “extraordinary remedy” of a stay.
Another of Meng’s lawyers described how her life had been “changed forever” by her arrest, saying she had been globally stigmatised and forced to live under “onerous” bail conditions akin to a community jail term, away from her husband and four children.
Meng, who is Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, is in the final stretch of her marathon extradition proceedings in Vancouver.