Over the past few years, Canada’s relationship with China has deteriorated to historic lows. This tension is due, in large part, to the extradition case against Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou to the United States. Yet the outcome of this case is by no means certain—repeated judicial miscalculations and political incompetence may very well mean that Ms. Meng walks free.
Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Vancouver airport on December 1, 2018. Since then, her lawyers have argued that she has been wrapped-up in sinister realpolitiks: this is not about justice, they argue, but instead about the US securing a beneficial trade deal with China, and about re-electing Donald Trump.
A Political Prosecution
The “political prosecution” line has been frequently scoffed at by the conservative commentariat who grow increasingly hawkish over China by the day, yet President Trump has been outspoken about his willingness to use this extradition as a political tool.
Take these comments, for example, made by President Trump in 2018: when asked if he would intervene in this case to secure a trade deal, he responded by saying “If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security.”
“I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” he added.
This was hardly a stand-alone, brash Trumpian comment. Last year, the president further clarified his intent to use Ms. Meng’s case as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations, telling reporters that he “may or may not include” a resolution to the Huawei debacle in the deal he was attempting to find with China.
This gives the Chinese regime and Ms. Meng’s defence team ammunition when they accuse Canada and the United States of a political prosecution. Whatever the case, these comments are hardly a celebration of the West’s rule of law. And the Canadian courts will need to consider whether, as part of whether to allow her to be extradited to the US, whether she can receive a fair trial there before an impartial jury, or if Trump’s inflammatory comments and the pre-trial publicity they and other US actions against Huawei have generated in the United States means Meng’s rights won’t be protected in the US.
The political nature of this prosecution was further highlighted through the former national security advisor John Bolton in his memoir, The Room Where it Happened. In an excerpt that was published in the Wall Street Journal, Bolton made this damning indictment: “In 2019, [Trump] offered to reverse criminal prosecution against Huawei if it would help in the trade deal—which, of course, was primarily about getting Trump reelected in 2020.”
These comments have forced Prime Minister Justin Trudeau into a deeply difficult position. It is now remarkably difficult for either Trump or Trudeau to claim the moral high ground.
Unclear Evidence
There is also value in actually examining the US’s evidence against Meng Wanzhou. The prosecution’s case is heavily tied to the argument that Ms. Meng “misled bankers.” Indeed, Canadian prosecutors stated that she was arrested in this country on the charge of bank fraud.
This, however, is far from clear. Huawei’s legal team have argued that the banks Ms. Meng supposedly misled knew that the Chinese telecom giant was working with Iranian companies.
This is clear through an explosive investigative report in the Globe and Mail, which reveals that the “victim” bank’s employees actually knew as early as 2010 that Huawei was doing businesses in Iran through its Skycom subsidiary. Moreover, a powerpoint that Ms. Meng presented to these bankers in 2013 is explicit in the fact that Huawei had business dealings in Iran.
The powerpoint, named the “risks in doing business in Iran,” was unequivocal in the fact that Huawei was working with 4 seperate, Iranian telecom companies. If—by the end of this presentation—these bankers still did not understand that the company had business dealings with Iran, they would have had to be chronically oblivious. These revelations call into question whether Meng misled the bank at all.
Furthermore, it’s important to remember that the conversations between Meng and the bank occurred in Hong Kong, and didn’t even involve the US. So there are legitimate questions as to whether the United States should even have jurisdiction over this – or if instead it’s flexing its “long-arm” to expand the scope of its jurisdiction to people and transactions without any connection to the US.
Finally, while conservative commentators have been consistently critical of the Iranian regime, Canada has never had US-style sanctions against Iran. In fact, around the same time as Meng’s was allegedly misleading the “victim” foreign bank, Prime Minister Trudeau was in fact trying to find ways to help Canadian companies like Bombardier sell more aerospace equipment to Iran.
Liberals in Canada have always had a soft spot for the Iranian regime, and so it must reek of hypocrisy to China and Meng’s lawyers that they are now going along with Trump’s attempts to prosecute Meng for allegedly doing the same thing for Huawei that Liberals have encouraged Canadian companies to do.
Charter Rights Violation
Whatever the merits of this argument may be, it is becoming increasingly clear that the extradition case will be dismissed through a legal technicality. This may take years, yet thanks to shoddy Canadian law-enforcement, a persuasive case can be made that Ms. Meng’s charter rights were abused.
In September of last year, Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers argued that Canadian police violated her charter rights to gather evidence against her. Ms. Meng, the defence argued, was questioned for three hours by authorities before her constitutional rights were invoked. This also contradicted the warrant the police had to arrest Ms. Meng, which stated that she should be arrested immediately.
According to Ms. Meng’s lawyer, in those three hours she repeatedly asked why she was being detained, yet received no answer. These apparent violations of Meng’s rights at the Vancouver airport will now also have to be weighed by Canadian courts and the government.
“She was not told she was the subject of an arrest warrant … she was not told this was a warrant that came out of the U.S. that had to do with activities some years ago,” said the defence lawyer.
According to Gary Botting, a lawyer who is one of Canada’s leading experts on extradition law, the case against Meng Wanzhou’ could go on for years—costing the Canadian taxpayer a significant amount of money. Perhaps this would all be justified if there was a significant case against the executive, yet it is now clear there isn't.
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