Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer faces long odds as her extradition fight enters its final phases, more than two and a half years after her arrest triggered an unprecedented diplomatic impasse between China, the U.S. and Canada.
A team of lawyers for Meng Wanzhou, 49, will seek to convince a Vancouver judge in hearings that begin Wednesday that the U.S. request to extradite her from Canada is deeply flawed, that her rights were abused, and that she should be released. If history is any guide, that argument will be tough — of the 798 U.S. handover requests received since 2008, Canada has only refused or discharged eight, according to Canada’s Department of Justice. Forty cases were withdrawn by the U.S.
“It’s going to be precedent-setting whichever way it goes,” says Gary Botting, a Canadian extradition lawyer who has worked on hundreds of cases but isn’t involved in this one. A win for Meng would be notable because discharges are so rare. A loss would validate a U.S. claim that it has the right to pursue a case in which the accused, the site of the alleged offense and the victim have no links to the U.S., he said.