This case is part of a decades long pattern
in which persons who fit a profile – Middle East heritage, Muslim faith, or
perceived to be Muslim – are presumed guilty of offences despite the lack
of any concrete evidence. Individuals like Dr. Diab whose physical description,
finger and palm prints, and handwriting do not match the original suspect’s are
nonetheless presumed to be perpetrators simply because of who they are, where
they are from or what they believe.
A Decade Gone: A Statement from the Hassan Diab Support Community, January 17, 2018
Ten years is a long time. Recall everything
you have done over the past decade, think of the challenges you have faced, the
joys you have cherished, the memories you’ve made, the things you forgot about
until someone else reminded you, and you can begin to appreciate just how long
a decade can be.
Now imagine how long this decade has been
for Dr. Hassan Diab. Like too many of
his 21st century contemporaries, he has been wrongly labeled a
terrorist because of the country where he was born and the religion he was
perceived to practice. Like a number of them, he was wrongfully accused of a
crime he did not commit, jailed in solitary confinement in Canada and overseas
for years on end, and at the same time confronted with a court room charade so
riddled with secrecy and lack of due process, that it placed him at real risk
of spending the rest of his life in
prison..
For years, Dr. Diab was subject to
draconian bail conditions in Canada, strapped to an electronic monitoring
device tracking his every movement and for which he had to pay $2,000 a month,
or be sent back to jail. He was
prevented from pursuing the profession he loved, sociology. For ten years he
tried to sleep at night, not knowing whether the next day he would be taken
from the embrace of his loving family and jailed for the rest of his life.
Always, he maintained and affirmed his innocence, and condemned the crime for
which he was accused.
Our friend Hassan Diab has lived this
nightmare since 2008. It came from the actions of misguided Canadian government
officials at the Department of Justice and was wholly preventable; so many red flags were raised along the way
it is astounding and shameful that no
one in government ever sought to stop the injustice being done to Hassan.
This case is part of a decades long pattern
in which persons who fit a profile – Middle East heritage, Muslim faith, or
perceived to be Muslim – are presumed guilty of offences despite the lack
of any concrete evidence. Individuals like Dr. Diab whose physical description,
finger and palm prints, and handwriting do not match the original suspect’s are
nonetheless presumed to be perpetrators simply because of who they are, where
they are from or what they believe.
As members of the Dr. Hassan Diab support
community, we have been privileged to play a modest role in this decade-long
journey of an innocent man towards justice and freedom. We have provided bail
money, volunteered to be sureties, written to government officials, signed
petitions, frozen in countless demonstrations, sat through months of judicial
hearings, and visited him in prison, all in the name of seeking a due process
that was never granted to Dr. Diab under Canada’s notoriously unfair
Extradition Act.
Whether we knew him before this began, or
came to know him as a result of this long decade, we can attest to the values
of friendship, generosity, compassion, and kindness that mark Dr. Diab and his
remarkable family. With Dr. Diab, with Rania, and with their young children, we
have gone on hikes, have attended theatre shows, played many a game of chess,
have gone on bike rides, watched them play with their children, have shared
meals from his remarkable culinary hand, and have engaged in deep philosophical
and historical discussions. Throughout the disappointments and sorrows, Hassan
and Rania have endured with grace. We have learned so much from them; it has
been a privilege. We are very thankful to the wonderful, outpouring of support
Hassan and his family have received from countless individuals and organization
across Canada, and the tireless work of his lawyers in Canada and France.
While we came together to support and fight
for the freedom of a wrongfully accused individual, this became so much more
personal for many of us who came to respect and love Dr. Diab, Rania, and their
children. For many of us, this was more than a cause: it became what you do for
a friend or loved one facing a long, protracted death sentence when the
antidote is readily available and accessible. If only officials at the
Department of Justice took the time to see the human behind the racist profile,
and look at facts, then perhaps such
cruel, heartless injustices would not be so easily committed.
While we are indeed grateful to see action
on the part of some Canadian officials, we do have to ask: why did it take so
long? Why did we have to fight so long and so hard to get this onto your
agenda? Why did Dr. Diab and his family face years of the same indifference and
lack of action that unfortunately accompanies the cases of far too many
Canadians detained abroad?
For now, we look forward to Hassan and
Rania and their kids getting to spend time together. And we look forward to
continuing our friendship with this remarkable family. They will need time away
from the public spotlight to decompress, to simply be with one another outside
the context of the fear, the stress, the tears, and the feeling that this
Kafkaesque nightmare would never end, a psychological and often physical prison imposed by the Canadian
government’s failure to uphold their most basic human rights.
In the meantime, it is critical to remember
that this is by no means over. You do not rob someone of their life for ten
years and pretend that nothing happened or that this is a happy ending because
it appears to be over.
Towards that end, we in the Justice for
Hassan Diab support community are calling on the Canadian government to take
immediate action on a number of fronts to not only help Dr. Diab recover, but
also to ensure that the inevitable next extradition injustice does not occur.
1.
The Extradition Act under which
this travesty occurred must be subject to a thorough, public, Parliamentary review,
and major changes must be made to ensure that foreign governments do not
collude with the Canadian government to exploit the law’s inherent weaknesses
in order to deprive someone of their basic rights, or to carry on a political
persecution by proxy as occurred in this case.
Sadly, under current extradition law anyone, including citizens, who
lives in this country could wake up tomorrow and find themselves in Dr. Diab’s
shoes. This must end.
2.
Prime Minister Trudeau said in
response to this case this it is cause for reflection. We believe it deserves more than that. A
full, public inquiry into the role of the Canadian government is urgently
needed– especially the part played by officials in the Justice Department in recklessly pursuing this case on behalf of
another government when it was abundantly clear from the beginning that there
was no substance to the allegations and by their requesting additional evidence against Dr. Diab when it
was absolutely clear that the case was on the verge of collapse. The Canadian
government must be transparent in explaining how Canada’s extradition law paved
the way for potential wrongful conviction and life imprisonment abroad. Most
importantly, individuals must be held accountable.
In summation, a thorough public review and
major changes to the Extradition Act to ensure that the perceived right of
another government to pluck someone out of Canada based on scanty, secret, or
contrived evidence does not trump an individual’s rights under Canadian and
international law. And a public inquiry into the role of Canadian officials –
especially at the Department of Justice – in recklessly pursuing this case,
with recommendations to ensure such cases do not happen again, is essential and
urgent