Often testy exchanges between prosecution and defence lawyers in the Hassan Diab extradition case apparently crossed the line of good conduct Thursday.
Toward the end of a day when federal Justice lawyer Claude LeFranÁois criticized Diab’s lawyer Donald Bayne for “flinging dirt” at the reputation of a French prosecuting magistrate, came an apology.
LeFranÁois, who had called Bayne’s behaviour “shameful,” acknowledged it was an inappropriate word to describe the work of the venerable criminal lawyer, but Bayne wasn’t quite ready to forgive.
“We are all professionals here,” Bayne said, adding that “courtesy” was part of the lawyers’ code of conduct. “To say that legitimate arguments that came from French evidence are shameful crosses the line,” he said.
Not for the first time, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger urged the lawyers to focus on arguments over the evidence which, he said, were “fair game,” and less on each other.
Diab, a former University of Ottawa sociology professor, is facing extradition to France to stand trial in the murder of four people who were killed Oct. 3, 1980, in an explosion outside the Copernic synagogue in Paris.
French police and prosecutors allege that Diab, in Paris with false papers and living under an assumed Greek Cypriot name, made the bomb and planted it in the saddle bag of a motorcycle parked on the sidewalk close to the synagogue.
In a week-long submission to the court, Bayne argued that the French evidence against Diab has been misrepresented and manipulated to strengthen the Crown’s case.
He has urged Maranger to stay (halt) the case and allow Diab to go free.
LeFranÁois says Bayne is accusing the French of obstruction of justice, and the claim is both wrong and disrespectful of France and Canada’s other extradition partners.
The claim, he adds, is the product of the “netherworld of Mr. Bayne’s dark imagination, a recipe of nonsense he wants to throw at this court to see if any of it will stick.”
He said there was no evidence to support Bayne’s allegation that the French had acted in bad faith.
Handwriting evidence is all Maranger needs to recommend Diab’s deportation, claimed LeFranÁois. The French have withdrawn the opinions of two handwriting experts and have offered a third for consideration.
Bayne, who says French intelligence information is unreliable because it comes from unknown sources, will call an expert witness next week to bolster his argument.
If Bayne is successful in his stay application, the case will be over.
