More than 110 Canadian Jurists Demand Justice for Hassan Diab

The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group (ICLMG) has made public an open letter addressed to the Minister of Justice David Lametti. The letter is signed by 118 members of the legal profession and legal scholars in Canada. It has also been copied to the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Prime Minister, and leaders of political parties. In it, the signatories call on Minister Lametti and his colleagues to take immediate action to protect the rights of Dr. Hassan Diab, a Canadian citizen, who continues to face a 13-year-long Kafkaesque process in the French legal system.

The full letter is below, or click for a PDF.

In the open letter, the signatories request:

  1. That, as Minister of Justice, you give immediate assurances that Canada will not accept nor accede to a second request for Hassan Diab’s extradition;
  2. That, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister Marc Garneau urge France to put an immediate end to this continuing miscarriage of justice;
  3. That, as the head of the Government of Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspend the extradition treaty with France.

Among the signatories:

Alex Neve (human rights activist and former Secretary General of Amnesty international, Canada), Gary Botting (one of Canada’s leading authorities on extradition law), Rob Currie (specialist in the area of international and transnational criminal law), Don Bayne (Hassan Diab’s Canadian lawyer, has conducted trial and appellate advocacy at all levels of courts in Canada and at public inquiries around the world), Dennis Edney (defense lawyer for former Guantanamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr), Paul Champ (widely recognized as a leading authority on human rights and employment law issues), John Packer (Director of the Human Rights Research & Education Centre, University of Ottawa), Pearl Eliadis (human rights lawyer, expert in national institutions, human rights and democratic development), Barbara Jackman (lawyer specializing in immigration, refugee and national security law, human rights activist and recipient of the Order of Canada), and Allan Rock (president emeritus and professor of law at the University of Ottawa, former Minister of Justice & Attorney General (1993-97).

Full letter:

September 14, 2021

The Honourable David Lametti
Minister of Justice
284 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0H8

Dear Minister Lametti,

Recently, over 10,000 letters from individuals and organisations were sent to your government expressing grave concern about the latest news regarding Hassan Diab and the prospects of a second extradition. In what appears to be a standard reply, you wrote the following:

“As extradition requests are confidential state-to-state communications, I cannot confirm or deny the existence of a request until and unless it is acted upon. Canada would review a new extradition request in accordance with the Extradition Act, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and our treaty obligations. A decision to start extradition proceedings would consider whether there is sufficient evidence to support the request as well as whether it is in the public interest to proceed.”

Your reply is unconvincing for the following reasons:

  1. A wait-and-see approach is unjustifiable

The urgency of the Hassan Diab case demands your intervention and, as expert lawyers have noted, you have the power to act now and not delay. Your wait-and-see approach is thus unjustified. “Parliament [has given you] full discretion not only to reject extradition requests out of hand but also to terminate them when to proceed appears to be against the national interest. This unusual provision, repeated in sections 14, 23(3) and 48(1) of the Extradition Act, is founded on the notion that extradition is not at base a legal or judicial issue, but rather is political in nature” (Gary Botting, https://legalmatterscanada.ca/hassan-diab-deserves-better-from-the-justice-minister).

Parliament has also given you, the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, certain extraordinary powers, including the ability to exercise your “discretion to stop an extradition proceeding in its tracks… where proceeding to court would likely have major political ramifications” (Gary Botting, https://legalmatterscanada.ca/hassan-diab-deserves-better-from-the-justice-minister).

You are no doubt aware “that in extradition matters, the courts act only in an advisory capacity. As soon as [you decide] to exercise [your] discretion to say “enough is enough” in an extradition case, the extradition is over, because under s. 23 of the Act, the judge is then compelled to discharge the person facing extradition” (Gary Botting, https://legalmatterscanada.ca/hassan-diab-deserves-better-from-the-justice-minister).

  1. A Non-reciprocal Extradition Treaty between France and Canada is iniquitous and defective

The extradition treaty with France to which you refer is inherently defective. There is no comity between France and Canada. In the Hassan Diab case, this lack of reciprocity has revealed France’s disrespect towards Canada. France has proven to be an untrustworthy extradition partner. It claimed to have evidence where there was none; it claimed to be ready for trial when it was not; and it lied in 2007 about a lack of fingerprint evidence when there was an abundance of fingerprints, each of which excluded Dr. Diab. France’s dishonesty was one of several factors that led to Dr. Diab’s unconscionable 39-month imprisonment in France.

As Rob Currie, Professor of Law at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie, has pointed out, the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) requires fair criminal investigation and trial procedures (Rob Currie, https://rabble.ca/news/2021/06/canada-should-suspend-its-extradition-treaty-france-over-persecution-hassan-diab). By ignoring evidence and substituting speculation, France has clearly violated this covenant in its Court of Appeal ruling of January 27, 2021.

  1. There is no evidence to support a second extradition request

The last shred of flimsy handwriting “evidence”, on which Dr. Diab was wrongly extradited in 2014, was jettisoned earlier this year by French handwriting analysts. There is no more evidence to support any extradition request. Short of veritable proof, the French Court of Appeal has thus resorted to fictions. In an exhaustive statement, Dr. Diab’s lawyer, Don Bayne, showed with impeccable logic that France’s Court of Appeal misstated facts, relied on discredited evidence, made up non-existent evidence (fanciful speculation), and engaged in contradictory reasoning (Don Bayne, https://www.justiceforhassandiab.org/bayne-memos-2021-05).

  1. It is not in the public interest to proceed

The persecution of Dr. Diab has now exceeded 14 years of his life, including more than 3 years in a French maximum-security prison, mostly in solitary confinement. He should no longer face the uncertainty of another extradition and Canada should take strong action to let France know that unfair political trials of Canadian citizens are not tolerated.

Thousands of Canadians have come to know the Ottawa professor as an innocent man, whose life has been massively damaged and whose rights and freedoms have been violated by France’s relentless persecution. These many persons, along with many organizations, have become Dr. Diab’s fervent supporters. They understand that he represents every Canadian, and that his loss of freedom could one day be theirs. That realization governs their passionate and persistent vindication of his cause. And they will not renounce their fight for justice until it is served. You, Sir, together with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marc Garneau, have the power to make that happen. Indeed, you have the obligation to reject any renewed extradition request from France and to bring this case to a close.

We, the undersigned, therefore ask:

  1. That, as Minister of Justice, you give immediate assurances that Canada will not accept nor accede to a second request for Hassan Diab’s extradition;
  2. That, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister Marc Garneau urge France to put an immediate end to this continuing miscarriage of justice;
  3. That, as the head of the Government of Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suspend the extradition treaty with France.

cc:

  • The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
  • The Honourable Marc Garneau, Minister of Foreign Affairs
  • The Honourable Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
  • The Honourable Erin O’Toole, leader, Conservative Party of Canada
  • Jagmeet Singh, leader, New Democratic Party of Canada
  • Annamie Paul, leader, Green Party of Canada
  • Yves-François Blanchet, leader, Bloc Québécois

 

SIGNATORIES:

Melanie Adrian, Associate Professor – Law, Ottawa, Ontario

Sharry Aiken, Queen’s University, Toronto, Ontario

Rabiat Akande, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Ontario

Ahmad Ammar, Lawyer, Windsor, Ontario

Amir Attaran, Professor, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Amanda Aziz, Lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Tharani Balachandran, Lawyer, Victoria, British Columbia

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay, Asst. Prof., Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Ontario

Donald Bayne, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

James Benham, Lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Faisal Bhabha, Associate Professor of Law, Toronto, Ontario

Amar Bhatia, Associate Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Ontario

Michael Blazer, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Gary Botting, Lawyer, Hope, British Columbia

Mary Boyce, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Susan Boyd, Professor Emerita, University of British Columbia, Allard School of Law, Vancouver, British Columbia

Janne Burton, Lawyer, retired, Toronto, Ontario

Doris Buss, Professor of Law, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Fathima Cader, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Paul Champ, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Avineet Cheema, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Donald Chiasson, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Michael Christensen, Dept. of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Sharon Cohen, Law, Toronto, Ontario

Kristina Cooke, PSAC, Ottawa, Ontario

Paul Copeland C M, Lawyer, Life Bencher, Law Society of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario

Edward Corrigan, Lawyer, London, Ontario

Karen Coulter, Law Society of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

Robert Currie, Professor of Law, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Gail Davidson, Lawyer, retired, rights activist, Vancouver, British Columbia

Michael Edelson, Criminal Defence Lawyer Certified by the LSO as a specialist in Criminal Litigation, Ottawa, Ontario

Dennis Edney Q.C., Lawyer, Osoyoos, British Columbia

Hagar Ehab Eldin Ahmed El Sayed, Barrister and Solicitor, Windsor, Ontario

Khalid Elgazzar, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Pearl Eliadis, Human rights lawyer, Member of the Quebec Bar and the Law Society of Ontario; Adjunct Professor of Law, McGill University; Full Member of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Montreal, Quebec

Jacques Emond, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

James Foord, Lawyer / Adjunct Professor of Law, Ottawa, Ontario

Kate Forrest, Lawyer, Montreal, Quebec

Tyler Goettl, Lawyer, Burlington, Ontario

Deryk Gravesande, Criminal Defence Counsel, Toronto, Ontario

Leslie Green, Professor of Law, Queen’s University, Toronto, Ontario

Jeremy Greenberg, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Ronald, Guertin, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Yavar Hameed, Human Rights Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Sheryl Hamilton, Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Mary Ann Higgs, Lawyer, Kingston, Ontario

Barbara Jackman, Lawyer, Jackman & Associates, Toronto, Ontario

Martha Jackman, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Peter Jacobsen, Lawyer, Chair of Canadian Issues Committee of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and Senior Fellow of the Center for Free Expression, Toronto, Ontario

Talia Joundi, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

James Kafieh, Lawyer, Perth, Ontario

Azeezah Kanji, Legal academic and journalist, Toronto, Ontario

Ariel Katz, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Faculty of Law, Toronto, Ontario

Lisa Kelly, Queen’s University, Faculty of Law (Assistant Professor), Kingston, Ontario

Kyong-ae Kim, Retired lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Aaron King, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Ayesha Kumararatne, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Dimitri Lascaris, Lawyer, Montreal, Quebec

Yves Le Bouthillier, Professeur de droit, Université d’Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Trudo Lemmens, Professor, Toronto, Ontario

John Liss, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Mary Liston, Associate Professor, Allard School of Law, Vancouver, British Columbia

Clifford Luyt, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Robin MacKay, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Jessica Magonet, Lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Dania Majib, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Peggy Malpass, Lawyer and Adjunct Professor, retired, Toronto, Ontario

Raji Mangat, Lawyer, West Coast LEAF, Vancouver, British Columbia

Pacifique Manirakiza, Professor of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Heidi Matthews, Assistant Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Ontario

Meghan McDermott, Lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Maeve McMahon, Associate Professor, Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Emily McMurtry, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Robert Meagher, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Richard Moon, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario

Les Morley, Lawyer, Kingston, Ontario

Catherine Morris, Lawyer (non-practicing), Victoria, British Columbia

Mary Jane Mossman, Professor Emerita, Toronto, Ontario

William Edmund Mugford, Lawyer (presently in retired status), Vancouver, British Columbia

Will Murray, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Roxanne Mykitiuk, Professor of Law, Toronto, Ontario

Alex Neve, Barrister and Solicitor, Adjunct Professor of International Human Rights Law, Ottawa, Ontario

Valerie Oosterveld, Professor, Western Law, London, Ontario

John Packer, Human Rights Research and Education Centre and Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Nicholas Pope, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Denise Réaume, Professor of Law, Toronto, Ontario

Karen Ann Reid, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Allan Rock, Professor of Law, Ottawa, Ontario

Mitchell Rowe, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Bijon Roy, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Sukhpreet Sangha, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Teresa Scassa, Professor, University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law, Ottawa, Ontario

Craig Scott, Professor of Law, Toronto, Ontario

Rodney Sellar, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Lisa Sharp, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Daniel Sheppard, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Len Shore, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Penelope Simons, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

Adrian Smith, Associate Professor, Law, Toronto, Ontario

Dan Snyder, Lawyer, Vancouver, British Columbia

Michael Spratt, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Don Stuart, Emeritus Professor, Kingston, Ontario

Emilie Taman, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Stephen Tasson, Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Eric, Tucker, Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Ontario

Philip Tunley, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Nicholas Valela, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Kim Veller, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Mark Wallace, Lawyer, Ottawa, Ontario

Adriel Weaver, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Noah Weisbord, Associate Professor of Law, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario

Christiane Wilke, Associate Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario

Jared Will, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Vincent Wong, PhD Student, Toronto, Ontario

Stepan Wood, Professor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

Bruce Woodrow, Lawyer (retired), Clarington (Newcastle), Ontario

Garrett Zehr, Lawyer, Toronto, Ontario

Cara Zwibel, Lawyer, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Toronto, Ontario