Lawyers for Meng Wanzhou – the Huawei executive at the centre of an extradition battle that has poisoned relations between Canada and China – have argued that officials misled her when she was detained at Vancouver airport. Before Meng was formally arrested on 1 December, she was questioned for nearly three hours by Canadian border agents. She was also asked to surrender her electronic devices, which border agents searched.
By leading her to believe her detention and questioning were immigration-related – and not the result of a US arrest warrant – police in effect violated her rights under Canada’s charter, her legal team said in court filings. “There [was] nothing routine about this,” Meng’s lawyer, Richard Peck, told the court, accusing the government of engaging in a “covert criminal investigation” under the pretext of immigration issues.
