By Moira Warburton
Nov 16 (Reuters) - Witness cross-examination in the U.S.
extradition case of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou
will resume in a Canadian court on Monday where Meng's lawyers
are trying to establish that her rights were violated during the
events leading up to her arrest.
Meng, 48, was arrested in December 2018 at Vancouver
International Airport by Canadian police, on a warrant from the
United States. She is facing charges of bank fraud for allegedly
misleading HSBC about Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's
business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to break
U.S. sanctions.
Meng has said she is innocent and is fighting the
extradition from under house arrest in Vancouver, where she owns
a home in one of Canada's most expensive neighborhoods.
Monday is to kick off 10 days of testimony that are a
continuation of hearings that were set to wrap up in early
November but ran overtime, necessitating more hearings to be
scheduled.
Lawyers for both Meng and the Canadian government will
cross-examine Canadian law enforcement officers and border
officials who were involved in the initial investigation and
arrest of Meng.
Meng's lawyers are fighting to get her extradition dismissed
on the basis of alleged abuses of process, arguing they
constitute violations of her civil rights laid out in Canada's
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In the first week of hearings, prosecutors for the Canadian
government tried to prove that Meng's arrest was by the book and
any lapses in due process should not impact the validity of her
extradition.
The extradition hearings are scheduled to wrap up in April
2021, though the potential for appeals mean the case could drag
on for years.
Diplomatic relations between Ottawa and Beijing became rocky
following Meng's arrest. Soon after her detention, China
arrested Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig on
espionage charges.
(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Toronto
Editing by Denny Thomas and Leslie Adler)