In Vancouver, a judge ruled to allow lawyers for a Huawei executive, subject to extradition proceedings at the request of the American justice system, to argue that the United States had deceived Canada into obtaining her arrest.
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This decision is in line with the defense, which argues that the rights of Meng Wanzhou, financial director of the Chinese group Huawei, were violated during his arrest on December 1, 2018 at the Vancouver airport, the US justice accusing him for bypassing US sanctions against Iran.
His lawyers, who want the extradition procedure quashed, had argued that the Americans had “blatantly deceived Canada” to obtain his arrest and forbade the admission of new evidence.
“I have concluded that there is an air of reality in Ms. Meng’s allegations of abuse of process regarding the conduct of the requesting state,” said the British Columbia Supreme Court judge. , Heather Holmes.
Ms Meng is accused of lying to HSBC Bank about the relationship between Huawei and Skycom, a subsidiary that sold telecoms equipment to Iran, during a PowerPoint presentation made in 2013, exposing the bank to US sanctions .
The lawyer for the Canadian prosecutor had urged Judge Holmes to “refuse to spend precious time in court on issues that have no chance of success.”
“Some of this evidence may realistically call into question the reliability (of the case record) on issues relevant to the hearing,” the judge said, however.
Meng Wanzhou’s arrest sparked an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and Beijing.
New preliminary hearings are scheduled for next month and early 2021.