The RCMP officer who arrested Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou three hours after she was detained at Vancouver's airport says he didn't arrest her sooner out of respect for the jurisdiction of Canada Border Services Agency.
Const. Winston Yep testified in B.C. Supreme Court today in the extradition case of Meng, whose lawyers are trying to show her arrest two years was unlawful and she should not be extradited to the U.S. on allegations of fraud.
The witnesses called to testify in court this week have been requested by Meng's defence team, which hopes to gather evidence for arguments it will make next year that she was subjected to an abuse of process.
Defence lawyer Richard Peck asked Yep why he didn't arrest Meng immediately after the plane landed or during a 13-minute window while she waited in a screening room before border officials questioned her.
Yep says border officials had their own concerns about Meng's immigration status and he agreed that they would complete their own process before he stepped in.
"It could have been just as easy for you to arrest her as she stepped off that plane and handed her over to CBSA to do whatever they had to do and then take her away. That way she had her rights, charter rights," Peck said.
"That's not what we discussed," Yep said.
"We had that discussion with CBSA, they had their process, we weren't going to interfere with their process."
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