Extradition judge told she, not minister, must decide if US has jurisdiction over Meng Wanzhou’s actions

The United States was engaged in a “power grab” that breached international law by trying to regulate Meng Wanzhou’s conduct in Hong Kong, the Huawei Technologies executive’s lawyer told her extradition hearing on Tuesday, reported the South China Morning Post.

Lawyer Gib van Ert said the judge presiding over the case, and not Canada’s justice minister, must decide whether the US had jurisdiction to bring its fraud case against Meng.

“It’s not a matter that you may leave to someone else. It is a legal determination. It is a question you must answer,” lawyer Gib van Ert told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, as he pressed the case that the US has no right to prosecute Meng under international law, and Holmes must therefore throw out the bid for her extradition to New York.

The case showed that the US had wrongfully “given itself the power to regulate the conduct of Chinese nationals in Hong Kong”, van Ert said.