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Canada declines to reveal U.S. documents regarding the arrest of Huawei exec.
Canada provided as much detail as it can legally on the arrest of Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, the government's lawyers said on Monday, when they requested further sensitive records pertaining to her 2018 detention.
Meng, 48, was arrested on a U.S. warrant at Vancouver International Airport in December 2018 on charges of bank fraud for reportedly misleading HSBC about Huawei's commercial activities in Iran.
She said she was innocent and was appealing for extradition to the United States while under house arrest in Vancouver.
On the first day of the hearings, scheduled to last up to three days, Meng 's counsel said that "a storm of e-mails" between Canadian and American authorities at the time of Meng 's detention would not all be subject to immunity, as Canadian prosecutors have claimed.
Meng 's attorneys also asked for more information to support their claim that the Canadian and American authorities also committed bureaucratic violations when interviewing Meng before her detention, including inappropriate disclosure of data about her mobile devices.
Crown counsel John Gibb-Carsley said his staff is committed to keeping the case as transparent as practicable without exposing the rights that need to be secured.
However, Meng 's attorneys argued that the misuse of authority is an exception to the right of lawsuits.
We see a storm of emails on the subject, said Scott Fenton, a lawyer for Meng. We would probably be accused of being mistaken if all these emails are on this subject because we can't read them, and it's up to a closed hearing to decide what they are about.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have refuted any violations in their actions during Meng 's detention.
Several of the privilege allegations were put before the federal court in Ottawa at the end of July because they were made on the grounds of national security.
The hearings will begin in a closed session on Tuesday, likely extending until Wednesday. Meng is not going to be there.
The timeline suggested jointly by lawyers for prosecution and defense indicated that a decision on the matter by Oct. 2 would require the remainder of the case to continue as expected, with hearings set for April 2021.
