Canadian officials also obtained security code for Meng’s home, court hears

The RCMP officer who took custody of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s electronics on the day of her arrest two years ago says foreign law enforcement never asked him to obtain the passcodes or search the devices.

Const. Gurvinder Dhaliwal said Monday American officials asked that Meng’s devices be seized and stored in special bags to prevent them from being erased remotely, which he considered to be a reasonable request.

He said he wasn’t concerned when the Canada Border Services Agency officer handed him a piece of paper with the passcodes written on it after the immigration exam adjourned and she was being arrested by RCMP.

“I didn’t even think about it, I just put them with the phones and I thought, this is her phones and these passcodes belong to her phones and eventually these phones and these belongings would go back to her once the process is complete,” Dhaliwal told the B.C. Supreme Court under examination by Crown counsel John Gibb-Carsley.

Meng was arrested at Vancouver’s airport in December 2018, nearly three hours after CBSA officials began questioning her as part of a border exam.

Dhaliwal told the evidencegathering hearing that he never asked officers from border services to obtain the passcodes or to ask any particular questions during Meng’s immigration exam.

Meng is wanted in the United States on fraud charges based on allegations related to American sanctions against Iran that both she and Chinese tech giant Huawei deny.

Her lawyers are collecting information they hope will support their allegation that Canadian officers improperly gathered evidence at the request of U.S. investigators under the guise of a routine border exam.