Canada would violate customary international law by extraditing Huawei’s chief financial officer to the United States, which wants to try her for bank fraud, advocates for the Chinese executive plead in new documents, according to Canadian public television station CBC.
Meng Wanzhou’s defense believes that the charges against his client have no “real connection” with the United States, according to CBC, which cites new documents filed Friday in court in Vancouver.
American justice accuses Mme Meng lied to an HSBC Bank executive in 2013 about Huawei’s ties to a subsidiary that sold telecoms equipment to Iran, exposing the bank to US sanctions.
The daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecoms giant was arrested at the end of 2018 at Vancouver airport at the request of the United States, causing a major diplomatic crisis between China and Canada.
In this new judicial front to derail the extradition procedure, Mme Meng rely on the advice of several experts in international law. For them, the United States does not have the jurisdiction to charge a Chinese national for actions which took place outside the United States and implicating a non-American executive at a British bank.
“There is no connection,” say the lawyers quoted by CBC. “None of the supposed actions [de Mme Meng] did not take place, in whole or in part, in the United States, or did not have consequences ”in that country, they say.
By authorizing the extradition of Mr.me Meng to the United States, “Canada would be complicit in a violation of customary international law,” they summarize.
The new documents were on file after several weeks of testimony from police and customs officials in Vancouver court, at the request of lawyers for the Huawei leader.
They also claim that their client’s rights were violated during her arrest at Vancouver airport or that sensitive information about her was transmitted to the FBI, which Canada denies.
They also maintain that the outgoing American president, Donald Trump, “poisoned” the procedure by affirming, at the end of 2018 in an interview, that he would not hesitate to intervene in the file against Mr.me Meng if it would get trade concessions from China.
Final hearings to determine whether Meng Wanzhou should be extradited are scheduled for next May.