OTTAWA – A federal lawyer today grilled an Ottawa professor accused of a 1980 Paris bombing over his extensive travels and relationships with women for the past two decades.
Federal lawyer Claude Lefrancois probed Hassan Diab about his past, trying to raise questions about Diab’s character during a bail hearing that is being held ahead of extradition proceedings that will determine whether the teacher should be sent to France to face murder charges.
Diab has been held in custody since his arrest last week.
Lefrancois suggested during his courtroom questioning that Diab’s wide travels as a student and teacher, and a recent trip with a woman to Cuba – while he was married to another woman – place his reliability in question.
The RCMP arrested Diab, 55, at the request of French authorities, who submitted affidavits and allegations that claim Diab was involved in the 1980 bombing of a Jewish Synagogue in Paris that killed four people outside the building.
A publication ban on the extradition proceedings and a sealing order on the evidence from France was reversed today at the request of both sides after an intervention by Ottawa lawyer Richard Dearden, who was acting on behalf of CBC and the Ottawa Citizen. Lefrancois said also that the French government had agreed to unseal the evidence.
The evidence includes claims by French police that Diab used an alias and a false Cyprus passport in 1980 to enter France, and then buy a motorscooter that carried explosives that went off outside the synagogue. The evidence also includes police sketches of the bombing suspect based on witness descriptions, and old passport photos.
Lefrancois grilled Diab for four hours over a log of the exit and entry stamps on his Lebanese passport while he was a student in Lebanon, and then when he later was a student and teacher in the United States and then a teacher in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. He later became a part-time sociology professor at both Carleton University and the University of Ottawa, where he was still teaching before his arrest.
A lot of the questioning centred on daytrips Diab took by bus from Beirut to Damascus and back. At the time, he was a teacher at the American University in Beirut, and said he used the trips to take time to grade papers.
Lefrancois zeroed in on a recent trip Diab took to Cuba with a woman from Montreal, while his current wife, who also teaches at Carleton University, remained in Ottawa.
When Lefrancois pressed Diab about not informing his wife he was flying to Cuba with another woman, Diab replied: “Why should I?”
As Lefrancois pressed him to suggest it was the proper thing to do, Diab replied “That’s your view, not my view.”
Lefrancois also questioned Diab about two children he has from two previous marriages. He also attempted to probe back to Diab’s high school travels before Ontario Superior Court Justice Michel Charbonneau interrupted him and told him he was going back too far.
Diab told court that relations between him and his wife, Rania Tfaily, have improved over the past few months after a strain that set in when both Diab and his wife believed they were being followed by strange men in dark cars earlier this year.
Diab said in response to questions from his own lawyer that he and his wife phoned 911 to alert police about their fears, but nothing was ever done. He said he eventually sublet a small apartment in Gatineau, Que., across the Ottawa River, to avoid the tailing.
Charbonneau intervened three times to disallow questions from Lefrancois over details of Diab’s past and relations with women, saying they were irrelevant to to the bail hearing, which is scheduled to resume tomorrow.
Diab’s lawyer, Rene Duval, dismissed the French evidence as “non-extistent” and said he will “tear it to pieces” as hearsay and unfactual when the extradition hearing begins.
