Hassan Naim Diab (Arabic: حسن نعیم دياب; born November 20, 1953) is a Lebanese-Canadian citizen, convicted as a terrorist in a controversial April 2023 French in absentia trial.
After a 6 year legal battle, on April 4, 2012, the Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, ordered Diab extradited to France.
On November 14, 2014, Hassan was extradited from Canada to France where he was under house arrest for 2 years and two months without trial while the investigation continued.
A hotel registration form completed with fake information had similar handwriting to Diab, though it appeared efforts had been made to change it.
[10] Diab had consistently contested the accusation by saying he was in Lebanon at the time of the terrorist attack, and that he had witnesses and evidence to prove it, as confirmed by French investigative magistrates prior to his release in 2018.
[13] Diab was born in Lebanon on November 20, 1953, and studied sociology at the American University of Beirut, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in 1982.
[14] Diab was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on November 13, 2008, at the request of French authorities who wanted him extradited to stand trial for his alleged role in a 1980 bombing outside a synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris.
His thesis adviser, Louis Kriesberg, a noted scholar of conflict resolution,[19] said he never knew Diab to be in any way antisemitic and called the news "not credible".
The Toronto-based national office of B'nai Brith issued a statement condemning Carleton's actions, while an Ottawa-based member of the group telephoned the university directly to complain.
"The university did the right thing," B'nai Brith's executive vice-president, Frank Dimant, said of Carleton's about-face in not allowing Diab to teach.
[17] The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) issued a press release condemning the actions of Carleton's administration.
[27] Evidence unsealed as part of the extradition case, in April 2009, included two police sketches made some time after the bombing.
The Crown, on behalf of France, retracted the evidentiary nature of its original handwriting experts and asked the court for more time in order to obtain another opinion.
[35] On May 17, 2010, the hearing scheduled to begin June 14, 2010, was again delayed after France disavowed the evidence of two handwriting experts discredited by the defence.
[36] The Crown planned instead to introduce evidence from a third, new French handwriting expert, who found a "very strong presumption" that Diab was the author of the hotel registration card.
On December 6, 2010, the presiding judge ruled to allow the testimony of three more defence handwriting experts, but said that he would not necessarily give it any weight in his final analysis.
Stating that the new report submitted by the Crown was "often confusing and incomprehensible", Lindblom criticized the mandate given to Bisotti, by Magistrate Marc Trévidic.
[41] On April 4, 2012, the Minister of Justice, Rob Nicholson, ordered Diab extradited to France to face terror bombing charges.
In May 2014, the Court of Appeal for Ontario confirmed the extradition order, writing that the minister's holding decision was "reasonable" and that he must be sent to face trial in France.
[3] Diab was extradited to France on November 14, 2014, to face investigation by the French legal authorities, as the main suspect of the 1980 attack.
"[45] On May 17, 2016, a French judge released Diab from jail, requiring him to wear a monitoring device, but allowing him to walk alone three hours a day.