There is more than enough circumstantial evidence against former University of Ottawa professor Hassan Diab to justify his extradition to France, a federal Crown lawyer argued on Friday.
Urging Justice Robert Maranger to ignore “emotional pleas” from Diab’s lawyer, prosecutor Jeffrey Johnston said the relatively “low standard” of evidence required by Canadian extradition law has been amply met during the protracted two-year proceedings against Diab.
The Lebanese-born Canadian is wanted for murder and attempted murder by Paris police for his alleged role in the bombing of a synagogue in the French capital in October 1980.
Diab, 57, says he is an innocent victim of mistaken identity.
Diab was a member of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) at the time of the bombing, said Johnston, and he had been identified by Paris witnesses.
But the single most important piece of evidence, he added, was the handwriting analysis of a French expert who compared five words written in a Paris hotel registration book shortly before the bombing with samples of Diab’s later writing taken from U.S. Immigration papers.
The French forensic handwriting expert, Anne Bisotti, found similarities in the writing.
French authorities allege that the person who signed into the hotel under the fictitious name Alexander Panadriyu and added “Larnaca, Cyprus, Technician” was a senior member of the terrorist team that planted the bomb outside Rue Copernic synagogue, killing four passersby.
Celebrants inside the synagogue, including more than a hundred children, were late leaving because of a delay in the service.
Diab’s lawyer Donald Bayne fought hard to have the handwriting analysis disallowed and brought three internationally-renowned experts, all of whom debunked the French work and accused Bisotti of not having a grasp of modern scientific methods.
Justice Maranger said he had problems with some aspects of the Bisotti analysis but said Bayne had failed to show that her report was “manifestly unreliable” — a legal threshold Bayne needed to meet in order to have the Bisotti evidence tossed.
Johnston conceded Friday that had the handwriting decision gone against the prosecutors, they would have faced “an uphill battle.
“The handwriting evidence standing alone is enough to warrant committal (for extradition),” he said. “But the evidence doesn’t stop there.”
Diab had been identified by one of his closest Lebanese friends from composite sketches published in the magazine Paris Match shortly after the bombing and by a hardware store security guard who tussled with Panadriyu during his botched theft of pliers.
The security guard identified Diab 30 years after the fact but said he remembered the incident clearly because it was the only time in his career that he had been in a fight.
“This wasn’t just a fleeting glance encounter,” said Johnston.
The “basket of circumstantial evidence” against Diab also includes the fact that he left Lebanon for Spain before the bombing, though there is no proof he went to France.
“He entered France,” alleged Johnston. “He just didn’t enter France on his own passport, which makes sense.”
Any deficiencies in the evidence being used against Diab in the extradition hearing were a matter for a future trial in Paris, he added, and not a Canadian extradition judge.
“This is not a trial,” he said.
The case continues Monday with more prosecution submissions, followed Tuesday by arguments for the defence.
