Vancouver | On Monday, the defense said Canada would violate customary international law by extraditing Huawei’s chief financial officer to the United States, which wants to stand trial for bank fraud.
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One of Huawei’s No. 2 attorneys said the charges against Meng Wanzhou had nothing to do with the United States and Canada and would undermine China’s sovereignty under international law if it extradited the latter.
US justice accuses Ms Ming of lying to a HSBC bank executive in 2013 about links between Huawei and a subsidiary selling telecom equipment to Iran, subjecting the organization to US sanctions.
Ms Meng and Huawei deny the accusations.
The daughter of the founder of the Chinese telecommunications giant was arrested at the end of 2018 at Vancouver Airport at the request of the United States, which caused a major diplomatic crisis between China and Canada.
In this new judicial front to block the extradition process, attorney Jeb Van Ert argued that the meeting between Ms Meng and HSBC took place in China and that “if laws are violated on this day – there,” it is only Beijing.
“What happened on August 22, 2013 in a Hong Kong restaurant between a Chinese citizen and an Anglo-Chinese bank does not mean, under international law, the United States.”
The attorney who heard the case warned that it would drag Canada into US violations of international law if Ms Meng was sent to the United States.
The new offensive line comes a week after Canada, the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on senior Chinese government officials to protest the treatment of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in western China.
Beijing responded by banning a Canadian lawmaker and members of a parliamentary human rights committee from entering China.
In February, the Attorney General of Canada relied on his “jurisdiction” to hear the extradition request.
Ms Meng has been living under surveillance in one of her Vancouver homes since her arrest in December 2018.
China recently sentenced two Canadians to prison a few days after he was arrested and charged with “espionage” during closed trials.
Their judgment will be known later.
