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 LeFrançois 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 the French language, but said handwriting analysts operate by an accepted set of international standards.
“The suggestion that we work by different standards is simply not true,” he said.
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.
“Ms. Bisotti’s report is often confusing and incomprehensible,” reported Lindblom. “I find her opinions to be patently unreliable and, for the most part, not supported even by her own observations.”
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.
In extradition hearings, the person sought is not allowed to bring competing evidence that would be part of a normal criminal trial but can challenge the “manifest reliability” of the evidence provided by the requesting country.
LeFrançois 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.
In his report on the French handwriting analysis, Lindblom criticized Bisotti for comparing documents written 15 years apart on the basis that little would have changed.
“How could Ms. Bisotti know what did or did not occur in Mr. Diab’s handwriting over the course of 15 years,” he said. “There are many writers who see a deterioration in penmanship and legibility in their intermediate years. This could result from the need to produce large volumes of handwriting in a hurried fashion (e.g. doctors and lawyers). A more recent phenomenon is the depreciation in writing skill coinciding with the advent of computer use.”
Bisotti, he said, had used a “numbers game” in analysing the handwriting and is essentially reporting that there are more similarities than differences in the samples, therefore they must both have been written by Diab.
“Evaluating similarities and differences is not just a matter of counting them up,” Lindblom said. “Many noted authorities have written on this subject. They all stress that differences, even though small in number, carry much greater significance and often outweigh abundant similarities.”
Bisotti, he added, was either not aware of or chose to disregard this basic principle, he added.
Along with questioning Lindblom’s credentials, LeFrançois asked in numerous ways whether Lindblom’s report was simply his word against Bisotti’s.
“You are implicitly or explicitly saying that you know better than her,” LeFrançois told Lindblom. “You are saying the correct method is A and she is saying it is B.”
Lindblom denied he was offering a competing opinion to the Bisotti report but offering an assessment of it, as were his instructions from Bayne.
In a vigorous defence of Bisotti’s qualifications, LeFrançois said the French expert was a member of numerous reputable professional organizations and had a degree in forensics.
The federal lawyer questioned Lindblom’s university qualifications.
“Where did you go to school, sir?” he asked Lindblom.
“University of Manitoba.”
“Where you got a general BA.”
When Lindblom couldn’t recall the outcome of a hearing at which he had appeared in Trinidad in the 1990s because he’d left before the final judgment, LeFrançois asked if he had taken “the money and run?”
Judge Maranger told LeFrançois the question was inappropriate.
The lawyer responded that the question had been meant as lighthearted.
