Accused terrorist Hassan Diab failed Tuesday in a last and crucial attempt to get handwriting evidence being used against him disallowed.
The handwriting analysis by French forensic expert Anne Bisotti has been called the “smoking gun” by prosecutors, meaning that it is key to the French case.
Paris authorities say Diab was a key player in a terrorist bombing outside a synagogue in October 1980 and that handwriting comparisons prove his involvement. A former University of Ottawa professor, Diab says he is innocent and the victim of mistaken identity.
Justice Robert Maranger had already ruled that the handwriting could stay as part of the evidence, but was also critical of some aspects which he labelled “problematic” and “confusing.”
Diab’s lawyer Donald Bayne picked up on Maranger’s comments and brought an application under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, claiming that the evidence would be accepted without question at any future Diab trial in France and would not be properly tested for reliability.
Bayne urged Maranger not to bury his head in the sand and say, “It’s not my problem.”
Maranger agreed with Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Johnston, who countered Bayne by saying Canadian extradition judges had no jurisdiction over what might happen in a foreign court.
In his ruling Tuesday, Maranger rejected the ostrich analogy.
“It is simply an application of the law,” he said. “I don’t have the jurisdiction.”
Bayne had previously called three expert witnesses in an effort to prove that Bisotti’s report was “manifestly unreliable,” which is a legal threshold that could have allowed Maranger to disallow the French analysis.
If Maranger had agreed with Bayne, the French extradition case against Diab would have been severely weakened and likely would have collapsed.
Diab could now face an uphill battle and a future of appeals to avoid being extradited to face trial in France for multiple murders.
Under Canadian extradition law, the final decision on whether to extradite a person wanted by a foreign country is made by the federal justice minister, who has jurisdiction Maranger says he does not.
The case will now enter its final stages with evidence from both sides scheduled to be finished by March 9.
