The second of three handwriting experts testifying for the defence at the Hassan Diab extradition hearing denied Wednesday that the trio had met to devise a “collective strategy” ahead of each of their court appearances.
During cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Claude LeFrançois, New Jersey-based forensic document examiner John Paul Osborn agreed that the three experts had met both via a Skype Internet conference call and later at a conference in Victoria, where they discussed French handwriting evidence being used against Diab.
LeFrançois said the three experts, well known to each other, wanted to make sure they were “reading from the same songbook.
“Wouldn’t it have been better just to act alone?” he asked Osborn. “Weren’t you concerned about your objectivity being compromised by these meetings?”
Osborn, a 28-year veteran of forensic document analysis, rejected the accusation and said he was confused by the French handwriting analysis and wanted to discuss it with his longtime colleagues to ensure “I wasn’t crazy.”
“I believe I was being very diligent in not allowing anything I heard to influence anything in my review,” he said. “It is part of my job not to be influenced and maintain independence no matter what others say.”
France wants the former University of Ottawa professor extradited to stand trial for murder in the deaths 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.
Diab, a Lebanon-born Canadian citizen, says he is the innocent victim of mistaken identity.
Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger, who will rule on whether the French have provided sufficient reliable evidence to justify Diab’s extradition, has allowed defence lawyer Donald Bayne to call the three internationally renowned experts.
Bayne says the three will prove that crucial French handwriting analysis is “manifestly unreliable” — the only defence option in extradition hearings, where the law requires that all evidence from requesting countries be accepted by Canadian courts as reliable unless a compelling case can be made to the contrary.
Federal Crown prosecutors, who have labelled handwriting evidence “the smoking gun”, fought hard to have Bayne’s trio of experts barred from testifying.
It is more or less accepted that the man who signed into a Paris hotel using the false name Alexander Panadriyu was also the person who planted the bomb in a motorcycle saddlebag outside the synagogue. French police compared that hotel card signature with Diab’s writing on mid-1990s United States government documents and it is those comparisons that are the centre of the handwriting analysis argument.
Osborn and former RCMP forensic document examiner Brian Lindblom have both strongly condemned the French analysis, saying it had been produced by someone with little or no acquaintance with international standards of forensic document examination.
The French analysis “has flaws so critical as to render the determinations wholly unreliable,” said Osborn.
The third expert — from the United Kingdom — is due to testify in early January.
In his 1½-day cross examination of Osborn, the two frequently locked horns on word definitions and often on whether Osborn’s written criticisms were a “report” or a “review” of the French analysis.
Osborn maintained throughout that his comments on French methodology were a “review” because it was not a report on French handwriting evidence but a review of the methodology used by the French analyst.
A review, added Osborn, is not as subject to the same rigorous professional standards as a report, which moved LeFrançois to accuse Osborn of “loosey goosey” analysis and giving himself licence to make unfounded criticisms of the French evidence.
“You can go to town on a review,” said LeFrançois, “because such a thing doesn’t exist, does it?
“Yes, it does,” responded Osborn, holding his review/report. “It’s here.”
The hearing continues in early January.
