Hassan Diab, the Ottawa university professor arrested in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four people, wasn’t in the French capital at the time of the terrorist act, according to his defence lawyers.
Still, Mr. Diab, who turned 55 this morning, finds himself in the Innes Road jail awaiting possible extradition and prosecution for the deadly bombing in a case that has haunted him since 2007, when he was named as a suspect in French and Canadian newspapers.
Mr. Diab, a sociology professor, has often felt like he’s being followed around Ottawa and Hull by agents he figured were French authorities.
The Citizen has learned that Mr. Diab has in fact been tailed off and on over the past year by RCMP officers. They have since searched his office and Hull home, a walk-up apartment in a working-class neighbourhood.
Mr. Diab, an educated man, quickly picked up on the fact that he was being followed so he forwarded information, including licence-plate numbers, to the Ottawa police, but nothing came of it. (The RCMP-led national security team has included members of the Ottawa police.)
The Citizen has also learned that the Mounties dispatched on Saturday a lone female RCMP officer to visit Mr. Diab in jail to talk to him without legal representation present. He didn’t take the bait, the accused’s lawyer confirmed.
“It was staged to elicit information. The tactic she was taking was to cajole him. She was being nice and saying, ‘If there’s anything I can do to help’,” confirmed René Duval, his lawyer, after being asked about the incident by the Citizen.
Mr. Duval said his client was not even in Paris at the time of the bombing, rather he was studying elsewhere.
Mr. Duval, who is defending Mr. Diab with law partner Jean-François Lauzon, said he intended to meet with his client at the Innes Road jail on Wednesday, on the eve of a bail hearing scheduled for Thursday.
In 2007, Mr. Diab told reporters that he was the victim of mistaken identity and said his name is common and that authorities should be more open when conducting their investigations.
Mr. Diab was arrested at his Hull apartment last Thursday. The apartment, its windows dirty and blinds drawn, is a world away from another address police say he kept in Ottawa, this one a condo on Dynes Road, up on the 26th floor, just below the penthouse.
His living quarters and daily routine are now far removed from his days as a sociology professor at universities, where students and faculty have expressed surprise that he’s been charged in the 1980 bomb killings of four people in Paris.
“He’s under a lot of stress,” said Mr. Duval.
Some inmates at the Innes Road jail call it Holiday Innes - with plenty of drugs to go around - but it’s nothing like a real holiday.
One of the last holidays for Mr. Diab came last February, on the 16th, with him on Flight TS 0561, Seat 29F, leaving Trudeau Airport in Montreal at 10:50 a.m. to Varadero, Cuba, a tourist town known for its sandy beaches, scuba diving and deep-sea fishing.
When Mr. Diab was arrested, he had yet to open the packaging to his Red Wolf fillet knife, a good fishing blade known for its non-slip handle. He kept a lawn chair, sandals, and a sun hat in the trunk of his old Plymouth Sundance.
Mr. Diab has “suffered immensely” as the result of false accusations made against him by French authorities, a close friend says.
In a series of e-mails to the Citizen, Daniel Lee said he wanted to provide details about Hassan Diab’s “personal and professional character.”
Mr. Lee, who now teaches sociology in California, met Mr. Diab in 1993 when they were both graduate students at Syracuse University. He wrote that in the 15 years since, he has been through “difficult and wonderful episodes” with his friend.
“We have hiked together in national parks, celebrated countless holidays, cooked many family dinners.”
If he is extradited to France, Mr. Diab will face multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and willful destruction of property by an organized group. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Special Operations was blamed for the attack.
But according to Mr. Lee, Mr. Diab is not the man police are looking for.
“There are many Hassan Diabs in the world,” he wrote. “The Hassan I know has never been a terrorist.”
In another e-mail, Mr. Lee wrote: “This is a tragic story of mistaken identity and frustrated interest in bringing a criminal to justice.”
In Mr. Diab’s case, he wrote, “we have a man who quickly reports being followed to the police; a man who publishes research in his own name; a man who travels frequently across international borders; and a man who is socially integrated. How is it possible that the French police could not find him for so long, if anyone can simply (Google) his name?”
Mr. Lee wrote that Mr. Diab was a student in Beirut at the time of the Paris bombing, “busy falling in love with a fellow student.”
Gary Dimmock is a senior reporter and can be reached at gdimmock@thecitizen.canwest.com
