US discusses deal with Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou that would allow it to return to China: source

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Her attorneys are gathering information to back up their allegations that Canadian officials improperly collected evidence against her when they arrested her at Vancouver airport in 2018.

Meng’s defense argues that an initial plan to arrest her aboard the plane was modified to allow for a “secret criminal investigation” in the guise of a routine immigration examination by order of the US authorities.

Eventually, Meng would be screened by border officers for nearly three hours before being informed of her arrest and her right to a lawyer.

Border officers working at the airport that day testified that they had their concerns about Meng’s admissibility to Canada and deny the allegations made by his lawyers.

Sgt. Ross Lundie told the court he always discourages his officers from making arrests on board flights unless there is an immediate public safety problem.

Meng herself posed no risk to her knowledge, she said, but planes are confined spaces and there can be dangers. It is safer to conduct an arrest at the gate, in the border control area or elsewhere, he said.

Lundie testified that arrest officers had phoned him the night before the arrest as they were driving to the airport to confirm whether Meng would be on the flight arriving in Vancouver. That was when he learned of the plan to get on the plane, he said.

Meng’s attorney Richard Peck suggested it couldn’t be. The phone records show that the chief of the agents they arrested, the sergeant. Janice Vander Graaf phoned them later that evening after speaking with her superior, who according to the court was the source of the plane crash plan.

If Vander Graaf’s recordings are correct, then Lundie could not have learned the arrest plan when he said he did, that night before, Peck suggested.

“My final suggestion is that you are confused in your memory,” Peck said.

“OK,” Lundie said.

The court also heard that the phone records suggested that Lundie had a three-minute phone call with a National Security Mountie in Ottawa with knowledge of the case that night. Lundie said she has no memory of the call.

With files from The Canadian Press