Meng's defense team challenges US evidence

Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou was back in a Canadian court on Wednesday for the final stretch of extradition proceedings that could send her to the United States.

Over the next a few weeks in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Meng's defense team will argue that the US manipulated the case for committal and the certified evidence before the court in Vancouver.

In a statement by Huawei on Wednesday, the Chinese company said the US has both mischaracterized evidence and omitted other evidence in order to establish fraud in the case against her. The US' "misconduct in certifying misleading evidence", coupled with its "shifting theory" of the case, has "corroded the fairness" of the Canadian legal proceedings, the statement said.

This week's hearing will feature defense arguments that the US misled Canada by omitting key details from the record of the case provided to the court to justify Meng's extradition.

Meng, 49, was arrested by Canadian authorities at Vancouver International Airport on Dec 1, 2018, at the request of the US, after arriving on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. She has been living under house arrest in Vancouver.

She is accused of misrepresenting the Chinese telecommunications company's relationship with technology firm Skycom in a Power-Point presentation to HSBC in 2013 and putting the British bank at risk of violating US sanctions against Iran. Meng and Huawei have repeatedly denied the accusations.

On Wednesday, the claims by Meng's lawyers about misrepresentation in the US record represent a new third branch of an abuse-of-process argument set out by them.

In the legal arguments before the hearing, defense lawyer Mona Duckett said that the US was selective in what it disclosed to Canada in its extradition request for Meng. Duckett told the court on Wednesday that the US misused the extradition process, calling its conduct "egregious" and "troublesome".

She said Canada should rely on the good faith of its extradition partners to tell the truth without "deliberate manipulation".

The only remedy for the court is to deny the extradition request, Duckett told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes.

Meng's lawyers said their abuse-of-process argument is based on four branches of misconduct: The politicization of Meng's case by then-US president Donald Trump and others, an arrest that was a "master class in how to violate a person's Charter rights", the certification by the US of "manifestly unreliable and potentially misleading" evidence aimed at the court, and a claim of jurisdiction by the US that constitutes a "brazen violation" of customary international law.

Meng attended the hearing and followed the proceedings through a translator.

Reputation harmed

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver immigration lawyer and member of the Law Society of British Columbia, told China Daily that the Crown has represented the US and the extradition standard has been reduced in the case.

"You just have to prove a very low standard of fraud. The fraud in this case is the international reputation of HSBC. The technical thing behind the charge of fraud alleged by America is that HSBC suffered, not in terms of money, in terms of the reputation of the bank (HSBC)," said Kurland.

"How can there be reputational damage to a bank like this? Regionally, this case was about Iran sanctions (by the US). But when it turned out here in Canada, the case morphed and morphed into a fraud case against HSBC's reputation."

Alykhan Velshi, vice-president of corporate affairs for Huawei Canada, said it has become clear that Meng's case is about trade and geopolitics rather than justice.

"This is a political prosecution, and we think that Ms Meng was detained at the request of the US, so that she could be used as leverage in the US-China trade war. ... Ultimately we have confidence that she should be allowed to return to China," Velshi said.

Agencies via Xinhua contributed to this story.