Trudeau should help free Diab
Re How a Canadian professor’s life became a horror show, Opinion, May 23 I was pleased to see Mohamed Fahmy’s column on the case of Hassan Diab. It is Kafkaesque how, with no good evidence, Diab has been scapegoated to serve political ends. Fahmy knows too well what this feels like. Hopefully, Diab’s nightmare will, like Fahmy’s, be ended soon when Canada’s government does the right thing: demanding his return to Canada and his family. Dr. James Deutsch, Toronto Mohamed Fahmy is right on: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must take action to bring Canadian citizen Hassan Diab home.
Thanks to a flawed Canadian extradition law, which allowed Hassan to fall between the cracks, he was extradited to France in November 2014, and has been in a Paris jail since. Let us not forget that France does not extradite its citizens.
Yes, the 1980 bombing of a synagogue, resulting in four deaths and dozens of injuries, was a tragedy beyond words. But it has been shown over and over that Hassan did not have anything to do with it.
How can some French judges order his release six times over the past year and six times the Court of Appeal overturns the ruling?
Is that not enough of a sign that Justin Trudeau has the obligation to use the full force of his office to end Hassan’s ordeal and bring him home to Canada? Ria Heynen, Ottawa Mohamed Fahmy’s column about Hassan Diab’s extradition to France to face trial for the bombing of a synagogue compares the story to a B-movie.
Although the characterization may be correct, the point is that extradition law is not about guilt or innocence.
Rather the legal test is whether there is sufficient evidence which, if believed, would allow a judge or jury to convict. Then there is the non-legal, political or other circumstances test that the minister of immigration is required to consider.
In both instances, the extradition judge and the minister upheld Mr. Diab’s handover to France. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld both decisions in a very lengthy legal decision, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused Mr. Diab’s application to review the case.
The very points that Mr. Fahmy makes in his article were dealt with by the courts, and may ultimately lead to Mr. Diab’s acquittal in France.
But, to reiterate, that is not the legal test for extradition cases, because such a hearing does not hear from all witnesses and does not necessarily involve the same factual or legal issues.
Mr. Fahmy’s belief in Mr. Diab’s innocence is obvious, but the court has to look to the relevant legal test and not to the opinions of journalists. Leo Adler, criminal counsel, Toronto
“Yes, the 1980 bombing of a synagogue, resulting in four deaths and dozens of injuries, was a tragedy beyond words. But it has been shown over and over that Hassan did not have anything to do with it.” RIA HEYNEN OTTAWA