"I can't ask for more." Non-Extradition, Hassan Diab

"After 43 years of judicial wandering, justice is finally served for this deadly antisemitic attack."

"Everything must now be done to enforce the international arrest warrant."

"CRIF calls on Canada to cooperate with French justice."

Yonathan Arfi, president, Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF)

 

"The course puts central emphasis on miscarriages of justice in the context of Canadian extradition law, with close examination of a high-profile extradition case that highlights the pertinent issues."

"[The] 'high-profile extradition case' focuses on Hassan Diab's own [trials and tribulations as an innocent man unjustly accused of being a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who was responsible for a deadly explosion in 1980 in Paris, at the Rue Copernic synagogue]."

Carleton University course outline in social justice

A French court has found Ottawa academic Hassan Diab guilty in absentia on terrorism charges related to a 1980 synagogue bombing. The question now is will Canada extradite him to face a life sentence? CBC

 

A year ago Palestinian-Canadian Hassan Diab was found by a French court to be guilty of charges that he committed a criminal offence in his involvement with the bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue. Groups as disparate -- yet linked by their concerns for 'human rights' -- as the Quakers, Amnesty International, Carleton University itself and scores of other groups have called on the federal government not to respond to France's extradition request following Dr. Diab's conviction.

This would be a second extradition; the first one returning him to France had him incarcerated for several years awaiting a trial that was postponed during the search to continue gathering plausible evidence against the man's involvement in a crime that killed four people and injured many others; a deadly attack against French Jews, marking a new era of violence committed by Palestinian or Islamist terrorists in France.

Before his arrest in Canada in 2008, when he was placed under strict bail conditions until he was returned to France in 2018, Diab had taught courses on human rights as a sessional lecturer at Carleton University. From that time in 2006 forward, to the present he is now once again teaching at Carleton University; a third-year course on social justice in action. The action related to social justice is entirely his own experience, emphasizing how an 'innocent man' can be caught up in a web of false intrigues.

Addressed to Carleton University president Jerry Tomberlin, an open letter by B'nai Brith was sent demanding Diab's dismissal. His continued employment at the university, the letter pointed out, "raises significant questions regarding Carleton's dedication to the safety and well-being of its students and staff." The university is well aware of Diab's conviction, and it has voiced their championship of his innocence.

Arriving in Canada in 1993, Diab claims to have been a victim of erroneous identity, that he had no involvement whatever in the bombing; a claim his colleagues at the department of sociology and anthropology at Carleton fully endorse in solidarity with the man they know only as one of their own. In the immediate aftermath of the French conviction last April, Carleton's department of sociology and anthropology sent a communique demanding that Diab's extradition be blocked by the federal Liberal government.

A rally was organized by the department the year before Diab's conviction, for the purpose of claiming that French justice authorities were involved in a sham case against their colleague: "Hassan Diab was not involved at all in that bombing that took place in 1980", an event listing claimed, with the authority of the convinced. It took until the 1990s before Diab became a suspect.

Major areas of circumstantial evidence propelled him into the role of primary suspect; his passport revealed that he entered and exited Europe immediately prior to and following the bombing. Testimony from friends in the hands of French authorities claimed that Diab had connections with the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A fiction figure by the name of "Alexander Panadriyu who purportedly planted the bomb, matched descriptions of Diab himself.

 

Firemen standing by the wreckage of a car and motorcycle after a bomb attack at a Paris synagogue on October 3, 1980 that killed four people. (AFP/Getty Images)

 

Other contentious evidence came down to French handwriting analysts finding similarities between Diab's writing style with the fictional Panadriyu on a hotel registration card. On Diab's first extradition in 2014 following a lengthy extradition process when a judge examining the extradition request and allied circumstantial evidence when the handwriting similarity was called into question, failure to proceed to trial after years in prison cast doubt on the extradition and the process of French justice by Canadian authorities.

Released from three years of prison without trial on the ruling of insufficient evidence to proceed, Diab returned to Canada. Finally, in 2021 a decision by the French Supreme Court ordered a re-opening of the case, but Canada was reluctant to extradite him once more; an external review of the case ordered by the federal government left the impression that Canada had erred in acceding to the French request for extradition, given the preceding circumstances.

That report concluded that there was "discomfort" in repeating the extradition process when the original process concluded with his dismissal without charges following three years of detention in a French prison. "He was legally extradited having been afforded all appropriate procedural protections. The fact that he was not convicted in France does not render the extradition process flawed", the report concluded.

 

The fact does remain: this is a man who steadfastly contends his innocence, charging mistaken identity was at the core of his ordeal. Yet, unmistakably, he was found guilty of involvement in a terrorist act by a French court of justice. On the basis of circumstantial evidence considered reliable enough to implicate him in the death of four people by terrorist action. By association and the conviction he is labelled a terrorist with past connection to the terror group PLFP. 

 

As such, honouring him as a man of authority on human rights and miscarriages of justice with an academic platform to pursue his personal goal of clearing his name as an innocent beleaguered by an

inefficient French system of justice that sought to placate the rage of French Jews over the actions of violent Islamists and Palestinian terrorists terrorizing and murdering Jews, in a case that has for so long defied solving and closure he is able to manipulate public opinion as a victim of injustice.

"[It's] still devastating to know they [French justice] pursued that biased road which led to the unfortunate decision."

"It was not easy on me or on supporters and [my] family in general."

"[Calling on Trudeau to honour his sentiments that what happened to Diab should not have happened and should never happen again]. That's the simplest and easiest and shortest thing."

"I can't ask for more."

Hassan Diab

Hassan Diab in Ottawa on Friday April 21, 2023. A French court found Diab guilty on Friday in relation to a 1980 bombing of a Paris Synagogue. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)