It’s one error. But does it point to a greater pattern?
A B.C. Supreme Court judge pondered the importance of a Canada Border Services Agency mistake Wednesday as she tried to decide how the misstep might fit into a conspiracy theory alleged by Meng Wanzhou’s lawyers.
Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes repeatedly interrupted a lawyer for the Crown as he tried to minimize the significance of border officers giving the Huawei executive’s phone passcodes to RCMP in error.
The mistake first emerged as an issue on Tuesday.
Meng’s lawyers claim the CBSA and RCMP conspired with the FBI to “trick” Meng into volunteering information during a customs examination before she was officially arrested after landing at Vancouver’s airport in December 2018.
Crown attorney John Gibb-Carsley said the passcode mistake needed to be viewed in the context of a larger set of events during which Canadian authorities acted entirely appropriately.
“I’m reminded of the old adage: ‘Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,'” Gibb-Carsley told Holmes as he wrapped up the Crown’s case.
The problem with the defence’s theory of the case, he said: “The truth gets in the way of their story.”
Alleged U.S. sanctions violation
Meng’s lawyers want Holmes to order the disclosure of a wide variety of documents and records they believe will bolster an argument that Meng’s rights were violated in the hours prior to her arrest.
The 47-year-old is facing possible extradition to the United States for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.
She’s accused of lying to banks about the nature of Huawei’s relationship with a company in Tehran that was attempting to sell U.S. telecommunications equipment in violation of American sanctions.
Huawei claimed the company, Skycom, was a “local partner.” But U.S. prosecutors claim the firm was actually a hidden subsidiary.
Sitting alongside her counsel, Meng has listened intently to arguments put forward by both defence and lawyers for Canada’s attorney general.
But the issue of the phone passcodes has proven thorny.
‘Inferences from absences’
Border officers seized the phones along with Meng’s laptop and tablet when she emerged onto the jetway after flying into YVR from Hong Kong.
The FBI had suggested to RCMP the previous day that the devices be placed in Mylar bags to prevent them from being remotely wiped.
The Crown has argued that the border officers were just doing their job in determining if Meng was admissible to Canada. They say no one has ever actually searched the phones, which the FBI no longer even want.
But as she considered the facts, Holmes kept returning to the phones.
If the FBI didn’t ask the CBSA to seize them, and the CBSA officers were supposedly acting independently, why were the Mylar bags used?
And if the border agents claim that they got the passcodes as part of the process of examining Meng’s goods for evidence of criminality, why didn’t they search them?
“We’re in a situation where we’re being asked to draw inferences from absences,” Holmes told Gibb-Carsley.
“Since we’re in the land of inferences because of the absence of evidence … we have the fact that the passcodes were given along with the devices that CBSA took on the jetway and put in Mylar bags, and we have the fact that the U.S. request was for exactly that.”