Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that politics played no part in the arrest of a top executive of Chinese tech giant Huawei, who was detained on a US extradition request. "I can assure everyone that we are a country (with) an independent judiciary," Trudeau told a tech conference in Montreal.

"And they took this decision without any political involvement or interference." The prime minister declined to comment further on the case, citing a court-ordered publication ban sought by Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, arrested at the request of US authorities as she was changing planes in Vancouver.