LaPresse columnist Isabelle Hachey noted Friday that your perception of Lebanese-Canadian sociologist Hassan Diab will depend largely on what news source you read. In the French and European press, Diab, who was tried in absentia, is a convicted terrorist. In the English-Canadian press, he is a persecuted innocent. Hachey is right. It’s like we’re reading about Diab and Mirror Diab.
In 1980, a terrorist attack on Rue Copernic Synagogue in Paris, France killed four people. Dozens were wounded.
After a decades-long gap where information failed to be shared among intelligence agencies, France requested Hassan Diab be extradited from Canada in 2008 on charges related to the attack. Canada complied in 2014, at which point Diab was imprisoned in France for three years awaiting trial. In 2018, charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence, and Diab returned to Canada. In 2021, the Paris Appeals court disagreed with that decision and reversed the dismissal of the charges and ordered a trial. The date was set for this month, April 3rd.
Diab never showed up. The trial went on without him, and he was found guilty in absentia. Now, the French court is calling for his extradition, though no formal request by the government has yet been made public.
Diab’s supporters, and the English-Canadian press, have suggested for years he would not have received a fair trial. How they are certain of this, I have no idea. They now demand he not be extradited.
Which despotic, tyrannical country is demanding Diab’s surrender? Which kangaroo court?
Oh, right. France.
The French news media tends to emphasize the facts of the case. According to France24, the attack was orchestrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Diab’s passport was found in the hands of one of their commanders soon after the attack, which prosecutors say proves Diab was in Europe at the time. Diab claims his passport was stolen, and that he was in Beirut taking exams at the time of the attack. Witnesses described the suspect to police, leading to a sketch that bore a striking resemblance to a younger Diab.
In the English-Canadian press, these details are strangely glossed over, in favour of gushing pleas to ease the suffering of this poor man.
Diab’s case is frequently referred to in the media as an “ordeal,” and Diab told the Ottawa Citizen his fight against the French judicial system is like “fighting ghosts.”
CBC cited Diab’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, calling the guilty ruling in absentia “unjust,” “wrongful,” and a “political conviction.”
The Globe and Mail published an op-ed calling the case an “injustice,” and insisting that “a stop should be put to it, once and for all.”
That is precisely what his trial was for, putting a stop to it. He never faced the charges before. The decades between were arduous for Diab, as they were for the victims and their families, but sometimes law is slow. Sometimes it creaks and stumbles. That is, in fact, by design. And yes, this was a particularly slow and stumbling process. It was no doubt an ordeal.
But Canada and France are nations of laws. Neither France nor Canada can simply seize people. There is a process. This is the foundation of every democracy. The next step in this process was for Diab to show up in court and face his accusers. This was requested. The English-Canadian press responded as if he were being kidnapped by the KGB.
For our English media to constantly run articles headlined with quotes from his supporters, dismissing the entire French justice system as corrupt, poisoning the well before the trial even began, essentially pushing the narrative that he should skip the trial and escape from it, like Roman Polanski, is absurd.
Where is this coming from, this bizarre zeal to assume not only the man’s innocence, but that he shouldn’t even have to stand trial? From whence does it stem, this certainty, this wholesale disparagement of the French police and courts?
I can only guess.
The English-Canadian media keeps mentioning that Diab is a sociology professor, as if that signifies incapacity to commit terror. Surely they cannot believe this, given Canada’s history of academics as political terrorists. Paul Rose, lecturer at UQAM and FLQ member, was convicted of kidnapping and murder in the October Crisis. Chiheb Esseghaier, PhD student at INRS University in Quebec and Al-Qaeda sympathizer, was found guilty of planning to derail a passenger train from Canada to New York.
Nor is academia a bulwark against antisemitism. A guest lecturer in one of my classes at Concordia University prefaced his presentation on food scarcity in Detroit by announcing that “the problem with the world today is people believe the rhetoric the Jews have told them that they are the chosen people.”
I reported the comment to the faculty chair, but Concordia, like many universities, is a little soft on antisemitism these days. They do have great energy and sympathy, however, for Palestinian activists. Journalists, meanwhile, are now molded in those same universities, and perhaps this political bias, entrenched in academia, has creeped into the press as well, maybe even unconsciously.
I cannot help but wonder how the English-Canadian press would be responding if this 1980 terrorist attack had been on a mosque rather than a synagogue. Would the sympathy remain?
Everywhere in the English Canadian press’ coverage, we find the word “Kafkaesque.” Warming to this theme, Diab, in the France 24 video, claims, “It’s like a continuous nightmare. You don’t know whether one day you will wake up and make it out of the process or not.” The whole affair is Kafkaesque, we are constantly told.
But it’s not. Joseph K. tried to show up for his trial.
If Diab wanted to fight the charges, he should have gone to court. Now, he must be extradited.
Terry Newman is a communication in engineering course lecturer at McGill University.
