Hassan Diab: Prime Minister Trudeau must reject France’s extradition demand

The bombing of the Copernic synagogue in France on Oct. 1, 1983 by terrorists was a hate crime that shook the Jewish world to its core. The fact that to this day the only suspect ever targeted for this atrocity, Hassan Diab appears by all rules of justice to be innocent of the crime has confounded and angered generations of Jews around the world.

On Thursday, a letter signed by over 130 members of the Canadian legal community, law professors, practicing and retired lawyers, retired judges, was sent to the prime minister asking him to deny the French request for an unprecedented second extradition.

I was the CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) during the first arrest and extradition of Diab. I have come full circle since that time studied this case closely. I have come to believe that Diab is innocent and to pin this wicked terrorist act on an innocent man especially with the surfeit of evidence in his favour would be a miscarriage of justice.

And I am not the only Jewish leader to accept this. My successor at CJC, Benjamin Shinewald, who also believed in Diab’s guilt upon assuming the position of CEO, has also reflected on his earlier views. Like me, after seeing the evidence and scrutinizing the details, Shinewald, a lawyer himself, offered a full apology in a column he penned for the Canadian Jewish News in 2018 where he wrote, “I hereby express my deepest regret to Mr. Diab for my actions.”

Nevertheless, France, despite all reasonable evidence to the contrary, has held a trial “in absentia.” Though a lower court found absolutely no credible evidence to even hold a trial, this higher court found him guilty. France wants Diab extradited, again, to serve a life sentence for a crime much of the rest of the world believes he did not commit.

And disturbingly, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the successor organization to CJC, is advocating that Diab “face justice” demanding Canada return him to France. I respectfully disagree with CIJA. Suggesting that there has been “two trials” for Diab belies the facts. There have not been two trials (not a “first” and a “second”). Only a trial in absentia relying on “intelligence” posing as evidence.

CIJA claims that there are “swaths of evidence of Diab’s guilt.” From the very start of the first extradition case, Canadian extradition judge, Robert Maranger, identified it as “insufficient, very problematic and convoluted.”

Maranger expressed deep concern about the case, even noting the unreliability of the then key piece of evidence, a hotel registration card allegedly signed by Diab, linking Diab to a Paris hotel where the bomber resided. Since that time even France has agreed that the handwriting analysis is untrustworthy.

In a recent interview with Diab’s Canadian legal counsel, Don Bayne explained: “The current French guilty verdict does not rely on actual evidence that could be tested by a court of law. The evidence in the French conviction is unsourced, ‘intelligence’ that cannot be tested in court because it is not known from where it comes or in what circumstances (torture?) it was obtained. In Canada such ‘evidence’ would be inadmissible as being in violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

In fact, the intelligence used by the recent French court decision was rejected years earlier in the Canadian extradition case because it was so obviously inadmissible. Yet, it was not only used in the latest French verdict but is the actual basis for the guilty finding.

And most striking is that France’s own professional investigative judges Herbaut and Folzer, gave evidence at the trial that there was no valid basis to convict. In fact, they admitted there was not even enough evidence to warrant this trial. The conviction ignores this critical evidence, evidence from France itself.

I am very sympathetic to CIJA’s desire to find justice for those murdered in Paris simply because they were Jews. This was a heinous, deplorable crime of hate. However, justice must be true and seen to be true.

When Diab returned from France in 2018 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this “never should have happened.” The prime minister must now ensure that Canada doesn’t send Diab back to France. If not, Canadians must face the real possibility that an innocent man will be torn from his family to spend his remaining days in prison for a crime he did not commit.