Crown prosecutors seeking the extradition to France of alleged terrorist Hassan Diab pushed hard Wednesday to undermine the professional credibility and qualifications of a former RCMP forensic document examiner.
In often testy, detailed cross-examination that indicated significant Justice Department research into consultant Brian Lindblom’s academic and professional background, federal prosecutor Claude LeFrancois quizzed the internationally known expert about his lack of knowledge of the qualifications needed for French handwriting analysis.
Lindblom admitted to never having worked in France, and to having scant knowledge of French, but said handwriting analysts operate by an accepted set of international standards.
Lindblom, retained by Diab’s lawyer Donald Bayne, had spent Monday and Tuesday blasting French handwriting analysis he said contained “assumption and speculation” and was produced by an analyst who has no internationally-recognized qualifications and little, if any, appropriate training.
France wants Diab extradited to stand trial for the murder of four passersby who were killed in a terrorist bomb blast 30 years ago outside the Rue Copernic synagogue in central Paris. More than 40 others were injured.
Evidence from witnesses questioned shortly after the bombing strongly suggests that the man who signed into the Paris hotel using the false name Alexander Panadriyu was also the person who planted the bomb in a motorcycle saddlebag outside the synagogue.
Lindblom said he was “shocked” by some of the conclusions reached by French analyst Anne Bisotti, who compared handwriting from a Paris hotel registry and Diab’s U.S. immigration papers from the 1990s when he studied there.
Bayne and the prosecutors are fighting a crucial battle over the handwriting that is key to the Diab case -- “the smoking gun,” as the prosecution has termed it.
LeFrancois and his Crown colleague Jeffrey Johnston fought to exclude Lindblom and two other yet-to-be-heard defence handwriting experts on the grounds they were simply competing opinions. Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger agreed to hear the experts but said it was no indication of how much weight he would eventually give to their opinions.
