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<h1>Hassan Diab: Nothing Less Than a Public Inquiry Will Do</h1>
<p class="metadata"><span class="metadata-category"><a
href="https://socialistproject.ca/category/anti-racism/"
rel="category tag">Anti-Racism</a>, <a
href="https://socialistproject.ca/category/canada/"
rel="category tag">Canada</a></span> • July 11, 2018 • <a
href="https://socialistproject.ca/author/michelle-weinroth/"
title="Posts by Michelle Weinroth" class="author url fn"
rel="author">Michelle Weinroth</a></p>
<p class="intro-text">He has been compared to <a
href="https://socialistproject.ca/2018/01/justice-hassan-diab-unbearable-banality-evil/">Alfred
Dreyfus</a>, the iconic 19th-century French victim of false
accusation and racism. The entire spectrum of the Canadian press
has covered his unfolding story since its inception in 2007. His
return to Canada from France in January 2018 was <a
href="http://www.cbc.ca/1.4484443" target="_blank">breaking
news</a>. An Ottawa sociology professor, Dr. Diab is the
Canadian citizen who, at the behest of France, was sought for
extradition. Subject to allegations of involvement in the
bombing of a Paris synagogue in 1980, he was pursued and
harassed by the RCMP in 2008. Arrested on November 13th of that
year, denied bail, and jailed in the disreputable <a
href="https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/photo-galleries/a-rare-look-inside-the-ottawa-carleton-detention-centre-1.3134628"
target="_blank">Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre</a>, he was
then released in April 2009, only to be placed under the most
draconian house arrest conditions. In 2014, after prolonged and
suspect hearings, his extradition to France was sealed.</p>
<figure id="attachment_14616" class="wp-caption alignright"><img
class="wp-image-14616 size-full"
src="https://socialistproject.ca/content/uploads/2018/07/Diab-Ottawa-2018-01.jpg"
alt=""><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Warm welcome for
Hassan at Ottawa airport, January 15, 2018.</figcaption></figure>
<p>A decisive moment came on July 28, 2009 when Dr. Diab’s summer
teaching appointment at Carleton University became public. The
news provoked a most vilifying statement from the <a
href="https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/articles/2009/the-b-nai-b-rith-and-hassan-diab"
target="_blank">B’nai B’rith</a>, which the latter sent post
haste to Carleton University: “The safety and security of the
community as a whole … are of great concern to us. … The last
place in the world where this man belongs is in a university
classroom, in front of impressionable students.” Carleton
University yielded to this external pressure and unceremoniously
<a href="http://www.socialist.ca/node/3551" target="_blank">terminated</a>
Dr. Diab’s summer contract.</p>
<p><span id="more-2339"></span></p>
<h3>Extradited to France</h3>
<p>Between 2010 and 2011, Dr. Diab endured a highly prolonged,
dubious, and <a
href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/judge-blasts-france-in-bombing-case-83868902.html"
target="_blank">exasperating process of extradition hearings</a>,
grounded in <a
href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/10/ottawa-must-seek-justice-for-hassan-diab.html"
target="_blank">secret, unsourced intelligence</a> that <a
href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/judge-clears-way-for-ottawa-professors-extradition-on-bomb-charges/article585880/"
target="_blank">confounded even the extradition judge.</a>
Barely convinced by the convoluted logic of the case, the judge
nonetheless ordered the extradition. Dr. Diab’s lawyer, Don
Bayne, produced an eminently powerful appeal that was denied at
every court level. His eloquent plea to the Minister of Justice
(Rob Nicholson) was <a
href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-hassan-diab-s-case-1.2099917"
target="_blank">cavalierly dismissed.</a> In 2014, Dr. Diab
was <a
href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/decision-to-extradite-terror-suspect-diab-upheld-1.1823203"
target="_blank">extradited to France</a>.</p>
<p>Compelled to leave in haste, he departed with but four items of
clothing and no chance to say goodbye. His wife and toddler were
left hanging in utter desperation. Thus began the next phase of
Dr. Diab’s ordeal – three years and two months in a
maximum-security French prison (Fleury-Mérogis) for a crime he
never committed and for which he was never even charged.</p>
<p>Rania Tfaily, his wife, describes his coerced departure as a
nightmare. As if sucked down the vortex of a black hole, he
remained incommunicado for an entire month. She received no
direct word of his whereabouts or of his welfare. A Carleton
University professor, she was seven months pregnant with her
second child at the time, left to agonize in solitude with no
relief from her nightmare. The heart-wrenching questions from
her bewildered toddler daughter came regularly: “Where’s daddy?”</p>
<p>The case of Dr. Diab represents a shocking miscarriage of
justice, committed by sundry Canadian and French authorities
that <em>presumed</em> him guilty, and were driven to see that
such a perception would stick in the public’s mind. Their
actions upended Dr. Diab’s life, subjected him, along with his
wife, to years of torment and humiliation, all on a contrived
allegation – involvement in a terrorist bombing at a Paris
synagogue in 1980 – a groundless accusation issued by a foreign
state and inflamed by rumour and racism.</p>
<p>Dr. Diab’s ordeal can be attributed in part to France. CBC <a
href="https://www.cbc.ca/1.4714307" target="_blank">recently
learned</a> that when French authorities made a formal
extradition request to Canada, they “were aware of – and failed
to disclose – fingerprint evidence that ultimately helped to
clear Hassan Diab of committing a terrorist attack … [C]ourt
documents show French prosecutors denied the evidence even
existed.” Having already analyzed Dr. Diab’s fingerprints in
2008, and having ascertained a mismatch months before making the
extradition request, they <em>knowingly</em> pursued the wrong
man.</p>
<h3>Canada Implicated</h3>
<p>But Canada is equally implicated in this affair. Our deeply
defective extradition law, which overrides the individual’s
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allowed blatantly false evidence
from France to justify sending Dr. Diab to indefinite
“purgatory,” to languish in solitary confinement in a
maximum-security prison for more than three years. But it was
not only the law that facilitated this unjust extradition; it
was also <em>agents of the law</em> who “pro-actively” sought
it.</p>
<p>Three key elements stand out in this embroiled narrative and
they are now the object of intense public concern: 1) France
framed Dr. Diab by denying that it knew (already in 2008) that
his fingerprints did not match those of the suspected bomber; 2)
Canada’s flawed extradition law deprives the sought individual
of the right to invoke evidence in his own defense beyond the
record of the case (e.g., Hassan Diab was not in France during
the 1980 bombing attack, but was not allowed to bring forth this
alibi); and 3) Canadian officials in the Department of Justice,
at the direction of a senior lawyer, Claude Lefrançois, actively
propped up the French extradition case, delaying court
procedures and withholding vital information.</p>
<p>In November 2009, Lefrançois requested a comparative analysis
of fingerprints. In early 2010, the RCMP produced the analysis.
The fingerprints did not match. Lefrançois would have known this
throughout the extradition hearings, yet he never shared the
information with the defence or showed it to the Canadian judge
who made the extradition order. In fact, Lefrançois “…regularly
exchanged memos with his French counterparts pushing for and
obtaining court delays until the French authorities could find a
“<a
href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-hassan-diab-is-another-canadian-let-down-by-our-government/"
target="_blank">smoking gun</a>” – handwriting analysis that
would guarantee Dr. Diab’s extradition. And while “that hunt for
case-saving evidence continued, court transcripts show
Lefrançois <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/1.4614855"
target="_blank">repeatedly told the court</a> he had no direct
knowledge of what France was doing – despite having directed
France to find the evidence.”</p>
<p>For a decade, then, France concealed possession of fingerprint
evidence that would have refuted allegations against Hassan
Diab. But for eight years, Canadian government officials <em>also</em>
knew that Dr. Diab’s fingerprints did not match those of the
suspected bomber. They concealed this fact from the court,
acting underhandedly to <a
href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hassan-diab-case-calls-question-canadas-extradition-process-181226756"
target="_blank">abet a French extradition request</a> that was
tainted from the outset.</p>
<p>These alarming disclosures beg fundamental questions: how and
why did our former government facilitate the extradition of one
of its citizens by withholding critical information that would
otherwise have saved him years of torment? Given this egregious
irregularity in judicial and government proceedings, and given
that Canada’s extradition law offers few, if any, safeguards to
protect the requested individual from extradition, it behooves
all Canadians to ponder seriously the extent of their civil
liberties.</p>
<h3>One Man’s Ordeal</h3>
<p>The case of Hassan Diab recalls the canary in the mine. From
the depths of one man’s ordeal, it illuminates a warning sign
that we must all heed. Any one of us, however innocent, could
fall into the same dark hole of hell that swallowed Dr. Diab for
ten years.</p>
<p>Now fully informed of Dr. Diab’s story, Canadians are <a
href="https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1674"
target="_blank">petitioning</a> the Government to set up an <em>independent
and public</em> inquiry: 1) to study the actions of Canadian
officials involved in abetting the cause of a foreign state by
actively promoting the extradition of Dr. Diab; and 2) to launch
a substantive revision of Canada’s extradition law that trumps
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Government must act
expeditiously on this matter, on behalf of every one of us, but
most importantly, on behalf of Dr. Diab and his family. Only
then will justice be served. •</p>
<div class="bullet-introduction">
For more information, see <a
href="http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org" target="_blank">justiceforhassandiab.org</a>.
<p><a
href="https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1674"
target="_blank">Petition to the Government of Canada</a><br>
e-1674 (Hassan Diab)<br>
The Petition is open for signature until September 13, 2018.
</p>
</div>
<div class="author-bio">
<p>Michelle Weinroth is a writer and teacher living in Ottawa.</p>
</div>
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