Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers exaggerated Trump’s remarks to get extradition request thrown out, court is told
- Canadian government lawyer Robert Frater says ‘no one has enjoyed a fairer hearing’ than the Huawei executive
- He says Meng’s lawyers resorted to a ‘conspiracy theory’ to support claims that she was the victim of an abuse of process
Former US president Donald Trump’s statements about the fraud case against Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou had been greatly exaggerated by her lawyers in an effort to have the American bid for her extradition thrown out, the Canadian justice department’s top lawyer said on Tuesday.
Robert Frater, chief general counsel with the department, also told Meng’s extradition hearing that her lawyers had resorted to a “conspiracy theory” about her alleged mistreatment by Canadian police and border officers to support their claims of an abuse of process.
“No one has enjoyed a fairer hearing than Ms Meng,” he later said.
Meng is wanted by the US to face trial for fraud, and her arrest at Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2018 spawned a marathon extradition case that has reverberated from Beijing to Washington and Ottawa. It is now in its closing stages.
On Monday, Meng’s lead lawyer, Richard Peck, said that Trump had wanted an economic “ransom” for her, that he treated her as a “bargaining chip” and that the violations against Meng by authorities on both sides of the border threatened Canada’s rule of law.
But Frater, representing US interests in the extradition case, told the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver that Peck and his colleagues “greatly overstate the former president’s words”.