[Fdu] "Nothing Less Than a Public Inquiry Will Do": Carleton's Hassan Diab and a parliamentary petition

[Cynthia Wright]

  Hassan Diab: Nothing Less Than a Public Inquiry Will Do

Anti-Racism <https://socialistproject.ca/category/anti-racism/>, Canada 
<https://socialistproject.ca/category/canada/>  •  July 11, 2018  • 
Michelle Weinroth <https://socialistproject.ca/author/michelle-weinroth/>

He has been compared to Alfred Dreyfus 
<https://socialistproject.ca/2018/01/justice-hassan-diab-unbearable-banality-evil/>, 
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 breaking news <http://www.cbc.ca/1.4484443>. 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 Ottawa Carleton 
Detention Centre 
<https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/photo-galleries/a-rare-look-inside-the-ottawa-carleton-detention-centre-1.3134628>, 
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.

Warm welcome for Hassan at Ottawa airport, January 15, 2018.

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 B’nai B’rith 
<https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/articles/2009/the-b-nai-b-rith-and-hassan-diab>, 
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 terminated 
<http://www.socialist.ca/node/3551> Dr. Diab’s summer contract.


      Extradited to France

Between 2010 and 2011, Dr. Diab endured a highly prolonged, dubious, and 
exasperating process of extradition hearings 
<https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/judge-blasts-france-in-bombing-case-83868902.html>, 
grounded in secret, unsourced intelligence 
<https://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/10/ottawa-must-seek-justice-for-hassan-diab.html> 
that confounded even the extradition judge. 
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/judge-clears-way-for-ottawa-professors-extradition-on-bomb-charges/article585880/> 
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 
cavalierly dismissed. 
<https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-hassan-diab-s-case-1.2099917> 
In 2014, Dr. Diab was extradited to France 
<https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/decision-to-extradite-terror-suspect-diab-upheld-1.1823203>.

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.

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?”

The case of Dr. Diab represents a shocking miscarriage of justice, 
committed by sundry Canadian and French authorities that /presumed/ 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.

Dr. Diab’s ordeal can be attributed in part to France. CBC recently 
learned <https://www.cbc.ca/1.4714307> 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 /knowingly/ 
pursued the wrong man.


      Canada Implicated

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 /agents of the law/ who “pro-actively” sought it.

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.

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 “smoking gun 
<https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-hassan-diab-is-another-canadian-let-down-by-our-government/>” 
– handwriting analysis that would guarantee Dr. Diab’s extradition. And 
while “that hunt for case-saving evidence continued, court transcripts 
show Lefrançois repeatedly told the court <https://www.cbc.ca/1.4614855> 
he had no direct knowledge of what France was doing – despite having 
directed France to find the evidence.”

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 /also/ knew that Dr. Diab’s 
fingerprints did not match those of the suspected bomber. They concealed 
this fact from the court, acting underhandedly to abet a French 
extradition request 
<http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hassan-diab-case-calls-question-canadas-extradition-process-181226756> 
that was tainted from the outset.

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.


      One Man’s Ordeal

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.

Now fully informed of Dr. Diab’s story, Canadians are petitioning 
<https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1674> 
the Government to set up an /independent and public/ 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. •

For more information, see justiceforhassandiab.org 
<http://www.justiceforhassandiab.org>.

Petition to the Government of Canada 
<https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1674>
e-1674 (Hassan Diab)
The Petition is open for signature until September 13, 2018.

Michelle Weinroth is a writer and teacher living in Ottawa.

<https://socialistproject.ca/2018/07/slovenia-parliamentary-elections-xenophobic-right/> 




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