CBSA officer claims Meng Wanzhou was flagged for 'national security' concerns ahead of arrival | CBC News

Supreme Court in Vancouver Wednesday, border services officer Scott Kirkland didn't elaborate on the exact reasons the chief financial officer had been singled out, but said his own open-source searches led him to believe she might be suspected of espionage.

The CBSA officer said he saw from news articles that Australia and New Zealand had already banned Huawei equipment at the time of Meng's arrival from Hong Kong on Dec.

"It was a concern," Kirkland said.

Kirkland admitted to having concerns about the impact of any delay on Meng's rights at the time that a colleague first floated the prospect of having the CBSA pull her aside once she got off a plane from Hong Kong.

"I stated that maybe we should just identify and pass on to the RCMP immediately," Kirkland said.

Kirkland, who said he featured in an episode of the CBSA reality TV show Border Security, spent the first hour of his testimony explaining the inner workings of the agency.

He explained that border services officers had their own concerns about Meng's immigration status and possible criminality separate to those of the RCMP.

The CBSA officer said he accompanied Meng and a colleague to the secondary inspection area where she was questioned about her activities and her thoughts on why she might have been pulled to one side.

Kirkland said he asked Meng for her phones and placed them into the clear bags that had been provided by the U.S.

He said he later asked her for the numbers attached to the devices as well as the pin codes, which he wrote on a piece of paper.

Kirkland said he realized a few days after the arrest that he no longer had the piece of paper with the codes.

"If you had realized at the time that the RCMP was walking away with the passcodes, what would you have done," Crown attorney Diba Majzub asked Kirkland.