An RCMP officer involved in the arrest of Meng Wanzhou at Vancouver's airport two years ago says the Mounties would have stepped in if she had tried to flee while in the custody of officials from the Canada Border Services Agency.
Sgt. Ross Lundie completed his testimony at the B.C. Supreme Court today as part of an evidence-gathering hearing in the Huawei executive's extradition case.
Her lawyers are trying to prove that the RCMP and the border agency co-ordinated a covert criminal investigation under the guise of a routine border exam in order to gather evidence for American investigators.
Each RCMP and border officer to testify so far has told the court they saw their organizations as having good relations but separate and independent mandates.
Richard Peck, one of Meng's lawyers, sought to establish during cross-examination of Lundie that those lines were more blurred.
Under questioning, Lundie agreed that RCMP officers observed Meng as she was intercepted by border officers after her plane landed at the gate and that Mounties were also in a room with a one-way mirror during her immigration exam.
"From the moment Meng was met by CBSA at the gate, she would not be leaving the airport except under the arrest of the RCMP," Peck proposed to Lundie.
"Yes."
She was under the "control" of both RCMP and the border agency at the airport, Peck suggested.
"She was being examined by CBSA and we were there, our presence was there," Lundie said.
"You would not have let her flee," Peck said.
"That's fair."
Meng's lawyers are gathering evidence to support an abuse of process claim next year, in which they will argue her arrest was unlawfully executed and she should be freed.
Meng is wanted in the United States on fraud and conspiracy charges based on allegations that both she and Huawei deny.