Huawei CFO should appeal to Canada justice minister, not court: Prosecutor

VANCOUVER (Reuters) – Canadian prosecutors told a court on Thursday that a judge was not best-placed to decide whether national security and geopolitical concerns can be used to strike down the request by the United States to extradite Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou.

Meng, 49, was arrested in December 2018 on a U.S. warrant accused of misleading HSBC about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran, putting the bank at risk of violating U.S. sanctions. She has said she is innocent and is fighting her extradition case from under house arrest in Vancouver.

Prosecutors argued on Thursday that if Meng has become a bargaining chip in a trade war between the United States and China, as her lawyers have claimed, then Canada’s minister of justice is the right person to decide that, not a judge.