by The Hassan Diab Support Committee
On 2 January 2025, Elon Musk wrote on ‘X’ that “the mass murderer” is “living free as a professor in Canada”. Musk also copied a tweet by the leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre (14 November 2024): “A man convicted in a French court for killing 4 people in a Paris bombing is living freely in Canada, even working as a professor …”.
Since early November 2024, there has been a concerted and malicious campaign, launched by B’nai Brith and others, in Canada, Israel, the UK, and the USA. It has
directly triggered hate mail and death threats against Hassan Diab, his wife, and two children. The campaign was further boosted on 13 November 2024 by a front-page op-ed in the National Post written by the Israeli ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed. Articles appeared on 10 January 2025 in the National Post and the Ottawa Citizen trumpeting the headline: “Convicted bomber, Carleton part ways”.
The French case against Dr. Diab was always extremely weak, a fact acknowledged by the Canadian extradition judge, Robert Maranger, who reluctantly committed Hassan for extradition to France in 2011. In his committal decision, Justice Maranger stated that the case against Hassan “contained a great deal of argument, hypothesis, conjecture, and references to information received, without describing the source of that information or the circumstances upon which it was received”. He added that “the prospects of conviction, in the context of a fair trial, seem unlikely.”
After Hassan was extradited to France in 2014, two of France’s most experienced and respected investigating judges, Jean-Marc Herbaut and Richard Foltzer, conducted a
thorough and meticulous investigation. They found no direct evidence of Dr. Diab’s involvement in the 1980 attack on the synagogue on rue Copernic, and all scientifically verifiable evidence excluded him. The French investigators did, however, find solid evidence confirming that he was in Beirut at university, studying for and writing exams, when the bomber was in Paris. On 12 January 2018, Herbaut and Foltzer issued an 80-page Order of Dismissal, having found no evidence to justify sending Hassan Diab to trial. After 38 months of incarceration (much of it in solitary confinement) in a French prison without any formal charge, Dr. Diab was immediately released and he returned to his home and family in Canada on 14 January 2018.
In April 2018, the State Prosecutor, along with the civil parties representing the families of the victims, launched an appeal against the Order of Dismissal. The process dragged on for almost three years until, in January 2021, the Appeal Court overturned the investigating judges’ Order of Dismissal and ordered that Hassan Diab be sent for trial. Hassan’s Canadian lawyer, Don Bayne, commented: “The serious multiple errors of fact, reliance on evidence so unreliable it should be disregarded, misstatement of its own mandated handwriting report, resort to sheer speculation in an effort to explain away ‘essential elements’ of exculpatory fingerprint and consistent alibi evidence, willful ignorance of the actual evidence and imposition on Hassan Diab of an impossible onus to prove absolute innocence ‘indisputably’ demonstrate that the decision of the French Court of Appeal to set aside the Investigation Judges’ Order of Dismissal and order that Hassan Diab be put on trial in France is an unjust decision and one that perpetuates over a decade-long miscarriage of justice.” [For Don Bayne’s full analysis, click here.]
The label “convicted synagogue bomber”, plastered on Dr. Diab’s identity, is a vilification resting on the verdict of an in absentia bogus trial at the Paris Special Assize Court in 2023. The trial was designed to convict Hassan Diab, and the verdict resulted from defamatory fabrications, secret “intelligence”, denial of exculpatory evidence, and perjury. It is important to note that during the trial, the two investigating judges (JeanMarc Herbaut and Richard Foltzer), testified in Hassan’s defence, repeating their original conclusion that there was no basis for a conviction. The Special Assize Court ignored their findings and declared Hassan guilty.
The unjust French conviction was based on secret, unsourced, uncircumstanced and unreliable “intelligence” – inadmissible in our system of justice. Canada must not be
party to this injustice and must state urgently and unequivocally that Hassan Diab will not be subjected to a second extradition.
Please Take Action to Counter Unjust and Hateful Attacks Against Dr. Hassan Diab
Please take a minute to send letters to Carleton University and the Canadian Government:
- Send a letter to the Carleton University administration and Board of Governors, urging them to not succumb to pressure and to protect Dr. Hassan Diab. He is an innocent man, wrongfully declared guilty in absentia in a sham French trial in April 2023.
- Send a letter to the Canadian Minister of Justice and the Canadian government, urging them to protect Dr. Hassan Diab and refuse any second request for his extradition to France.
- Écrire une lettre au gouvernement canadien.
