“Beyond Kafkaesque”: Will Hassan Diab Receive Justice?
In 1980, the synagogue in Paris was bombed, killing four and injuring 40 others. Over four decades later, French authorities settled on one suspect, despite the fact that the perpetrators could have been a neo-Nazi group, which had bombed a Jewish site on that same date years earlier. Canadian academic Dr. Hassan Diab was extradited to France to stand trial. He spent 38 months in near solitary confinement in Fleury-Merogis, Europe’s biggest maximum security prison, while the French magistrates investigated his case. The two French judges–experts in cases of terrorism–dismissed the case in 2018. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared that Dr, Hassan should never have had to suffer. Nevertheless, French prosecutors appealed the case, and in 2023 Hassan Diab was convicted in absentia for this unsolved crime. Former Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada, Alex Neva, described the prosecution of Hassan Diab as, “surreal and disgraceful.” Diab was 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. In this episode on Speaking Out of Place podcast Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with 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.