"Beyond Kafkaesque": Will Hassan Diab Receive Justice?

In 1980, a synagogue in Paris was bombed, killing four and injuring 40 others. Thirty-four years later, French authorities settled on one suspect--Hassan Diab. This, despite the fact that it is likely that the bombing was undertaken by a neo-Nazi group, commemorating the anniversary of another one of its anti-semitic attacks. After being extradited from Canada to France in 2014, Diab was arrested and held in detention. In 2018, two of the top anti-terrorist judges in France dismissed the case, and Canadian premier Justin Trudeau publicly decried this miscarriage of justice.

Nevertheless, the French prosecutors appealed the decision, and in 2023 Canadian academic Dr. Hassan Diab was convicted in absentia for this unsolved crime.  The two judges who had exonerated him in 2018 testified on Diab's behalf.  Former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, Alex Neva, has described the prosecution of Hassan Diab as, “surreal and disgraceful.”

Diab has been sentenced to life despite all of the evidence indicating that he could not possibly have committed it. He is currently facing re- extradition from Canada to France. 

Today we have with us Dr. Hassan Diab, as well as Michelle Weinroth, a long-term member of the Hassan Diab Support Committee, and Bernie Farber, former head of Canadian Jewish Congress who previously advocated for the extradition of Dr. Diab, but now has become one of his supporters. 

Dr. Hassan Diab is a Canadian citizen and sociology professor who lives in Ottawa. Up until October, 2007, Hassan enjoyed an engaged and productive public life, including teaching, publishing research, and traveling internationally.

Bernie Farber is the Founding Chair of the Canadian AntiHate Network. His career spans more than three decades focusing on human rights, diversity, countering antisemitism and extremism. His expertise has been recognized by Canadian Courts, media and law enforcement. His efforts have been documented in numerous Canadian human rights publications, books, films, newspapers and magazines. He is widely respected as a CEO in the not-for-profit world best known internationally as the former CEO of Canadian Jewish Congress. He is a published author and a newspaper columnist. He is a a recipient of numerous medals and awards for his human rights work. In his retirement he is a consultant on antisemitism and extremism to Canadian School Boards and police services, he sits as an advisor to Human Rights Watch Canada and the Mosaic Institute and Chairs the Rights and Ethics Committee of Community Living Toronto.

Michelle Weinroth is a writer and teacher living in Ottawa. She taught English literature at the University of Ottawa and at Carleton University for a decade. Her area of specialization is the workings of propaganda in 19th- and 20th-century fiction and non-fiction. Over the past seven years, she has taken a special interest in the Hassan Diab Affair.