China News Service, Toronto, March 18 (Reporter Yu Ruidong) The extradition case of Meng Wanzhou continued on March 17th, local time in the High Court of British Columbia, Canada in Vancouver.
The prosecution and defense began to debate whether there was procedural abuse during the detention of Meng Wanzhou.
Meng Wanzhou’s defense attorney argued to the court that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police used misleading statements or deliberately concealed materials to submit applications for a provisional arrest warrant to the judge before the arrest, which constituted an abuse of procedure.
The United States could have used the normal extradition application procedure, but it chose to apply for a provisional arrest warrant, which is a special path in the Canadian extradition procedure, for insufficient reasons.
The serious information omission and misleading in the arrest warrant application gave the judge the false impression that Meng Wanzhou knew that he was under criminal charges by the US and that he might abscond at any time and needed to be arrested immediately.
RCMP officials did not correct the misleading information to the judge when they learned that Meng was closely related to Canada.
The defense lawyer also believed in the court that, as a law enforcement agency, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Border Services Agency ignored the requirements of the provisional arrest warrant for "immediate arrest" and delayed the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, during which an irregular "entry inspection" was carried out for 3 hours. , Intended to help the FBI conduct secret investigations and obtain information.
In the process, law enforcement officers violated court orders and violated Meng’s constitutional rights, which constituted procedural abuse.
The Border Services Agency could have postponed customs and immigration inspections, and the RCMP first carried out the arrests and informed Meng of the charter rights. However, they carried out completely unnecessary immigration inspections. In fact, they carried out illegal criminal investigations.
And since Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on December 1, 2018, about 28 months have passed and the immigration process has not yet been completed.
According to the defense line, Meng Fang’s lawyer believed that there was procedural abuse in this case, and the extradition procedure should be suspended.
The defense proposed four branches for this.
In the week beginning on March 1, the prosecution and the defense have debated in court on the first branch, the issue of political motivation.
The question of suspected illegal detention currently under discussion belongs to the second branch.
The defense believes that Canadian and American official agencies have continuously and systematically violated Bangladesh's charter rights.
From late October to early mid-December last year, the prosecution and defense have successively cross-examined 11 witnesses from the Canadian Border Services Agency and the Royal Mounted Police in multiple rounds of court hearings.
In the meantime, some witnesses admitted that there were errors in the arrest process, some witnesses had conflicting statements or inconsistent testimony, and some witnesses contacted the prosecutor in violation of the rules during the court session.
A retired RCMP officer who has left Canada refused to testify in court.
The court will later debate on the fourth branch, the suspected violation of customary international law.
From the last week of April to mid-May this year, the court will focus on the third branch, that is, whether there are major omissions and misstatements in the case materials provided by the US to the Canadian side.
After that, the trial judge will make a ruling on whether the case constitutes a procedural abuse and is sufficient to suspend the extradition procedure.
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