Accused terrorist Hassan Diab has no connections to any terrorist group ready to spirit him out of Canada, defence lawyer Donald Bayne told an Ottawa court Tuesday.
Bayne said he wanted to “dispense with the myth” that Diab was being supported, financially or otherwise, by any group.
Diab ran out of money a year ago, said Bayne, adding that he and a colleague are working pro bono (for free) on the extradition case.
The veteran criminal lawyer revealed his business relationship with Diab after a third colleague joined him at the defence council table and told Justice Robert Maranger that he should not get the impression that Diab has unlimited resources.
The reference to the “mythical” group supporting Diab refers to Diab’s bail hearing almost two years ago when federal Justice Department lawyers opposed bail on the grounds that Diab would use his Palestinian contacts to get him out of Canada.
The former University of Ottawa sociology professor is facing extradition to France to face murder charges in the deaths of four people who were killed Oct. 3, 1980, outside the Copernic synagogue in Paris.
French police and prosecutors allege that Diab made the bomb and then planted it in the saddle bag of a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk close to the synagogue.
But for a delay in the service that kept hundreds of people inside the synagogue longer than normal, casualties would have been significantly higher.
Paris police say the terrorists watched the synagogue, possibly for weeks, and timed the blast to kill and maim many people.
Diab, who was born in Lebanon but became a Canadian citizen in the early 1990s, says he is innocent and had no part in the bombing or any connection with a Palestinian group.
“I condemn all ethnically, racially and religiously motivated violence,” Diab said in a written statement Monday.
After spending four-and-a- half months in prison following his arrest two years ago, Diab was granted bail on strict conditions that amount to virtual house arrest.
Lawyer Bayne, who is in the midst of making the case to Maranger that the weak and misleading nature of French evidence makes a mockery of Canadian standards of justice, spent a second day attacking the credibility of lead French prosecutor Marc Trévidic.
He said Trévidic has deliberately manipulated and misrepresented evidence in an effort to get Diab extradited to France and if he succeeds, the Canadian extradition system will become vulnerable to similar “abuse” from countries with which Canada has extradition treaties.
“There is no proper foundation for this extradition hearing,” he told Maranger. “You can control your own process and prevent this abuse. Not to dismiss (the case) would be to encourage other states to do the same thing. Your honour, you are on solid ground here.”
Bayne said the Canadian extradition process is heavily weighted in favour of the foreign state and the French conduct in the Diab case has been to deliberately and unfairly increase that advantage.
“We must trust our treaty partners to be honest,” he said. “There is not much more protection than that (in extradition proceedings) for the average Canadian.
“It amounts to a statement (by the French) that you can make misrepresentations and they won’t likely catch you.”
Among other misleading information Bayne accuses Trévidic of submitting to Canada, is key evidence surrounding a false Cypriot passport that Diab allegedly used to get from Spain into France after travelling from Lebanon to Spain on his own Lebanese passport.
The French allege that Diab swapped his Lebanese passport for the false one in Spain before continuing to France under the assumed name of Alexander Panadriyu.
Bayne claimed Tuesday that the French have no credible evidence that Diab travelled anywhere but Spain and says Trévidic manipulated evidence in an effort to support his theory that Diab was part of the bombing plot.
“The lack of diligence in the Diab case is egregious,” said Bayne.
He told Maranger there have been only five stays (dismissals) in modern Canadian extradition history and the Diab case meets all or more of the criteria used to dismiss those cases.
The hearing continues today.
