Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou seeks Canadian spy-service documents, claiming national security ‘cover-up’
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is demanding fuller access to
redacted spy-service documents about her arrest that her lawyers say Canadian
authorities are trying to “cover up” on spurious national security grounds, as
she challenges a US attempt to have her extradited from Vancouver.
In a federal court application being heard in Ottawa on
Monday, Meng’s lawyers claimed that the documents have likely been the subject
of “excessive redactions [and] overly broad claims of privilege”, and are
likely relevant to Meng’s claims that she was the victim of an abuse of process
in her arrest. They say her ongoing extradition hearing in the British Columbia
Supreme Court should be thrown out because of this.
The lawyers want access to material provided on Meng’s case
to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) by “human sources”, as
well as the role of the CSIS officers in Meng’s December 1, 2018 arrest at
Vancouver’s airport.
But CSIS says the material could identify its secret sources
and cannot be revealed as a matter of national security.
“What happened, who was involved, the communications between
the parties … these are highly relevant facts,” to the abuse claims, Meng’s
lawyer Scott Fenton told Justice Catherine Kane in the federal court.
The case has upended China’s relations with Canada and the
United States. US authorities, who want Meng to face trial in New York, accuse
her of bank fraud in relation to Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, while her
lawyers and Beijing say she was arrested as a bargaining chip in US trade negotiations
with China.
“National security privilege should not be used to cover up
the abuse,” Meng’s lawyers said in a memo supporting their case. “Additionally,
national security privilege should not be used to protect government
enforcement officials from being embarrassed.”
Fenton said Meng was subjected to a “shocking disregard” of
the terms of her arrest warrant, issued by a Canadian judge after a request
from US prosecutors, which said she should be arrested “immediately”.
Fenton said Canadian federal police delayed the arrest for
three hours after Meng got off her flight, while Canada Border Services Agency
(CBSA) officers conducted a “covert” investigation of her on behalf of US
authorities, seizing her electronic devices and their passwords and
interrogating her.
“The CBSA used its extraordinary powers … to gather evidence
for the FBI on Ms Meng” that was unrelated to their mandate as border officers,
Fenton said.
He said that instead of being a routine border inspection,
as lawyers for Canada’s attorney general had claimed, “it was improper and an
abuse to use CBSA powers to advance a foreign criminal investigation”.
By failing to inform Meng of the true reasons for her
three-hour detention, and that her arrest was impending, the CBSA officers and
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had “tricked” her.
Fenton said Meng’s legal team wanted the identities of RCMP
officers who were apparently liaising with CSIS and seemed to know “what was
about to go down” ahead of the arrest.
He said Meng’s lawyers did not necessarily need to know the
names of CSIS officers. But the legal memo said that “if, however, the role of
a particular CSIS employee emerges … such information should be disclosed.”
Canadian government lawyer Robert Frater, representing US
interests in the case, said his team did not accept that there had been a
“conspiracy”, nor that there had been a violation of Meng’s rights or the terms
of the arrest warrant.
He said his team had not conceded the relevance of the
material being sought, and that Kane was being asked by Meng’s lawyers “to draw
fanciful inferences from anodyne statements and documents”.
The public portion of the federal court hearing on Monday
was adjourned. However it will continue in the form of a special closed hearing
on Thursday, when Frater’s team will make their submissions as the material
sought by Meng is regarded by the government as secret.
Not even she or her lawyers will be allowed to attend
discussions that reveal it. Instead, a lawyer with national security clearance,
known as an amicus curiae, has been appointed to advise the court in addition
to the government’s lawyers.
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