March 20, 2026 — a webinar entitled Justice for Professor Hassan Diab was hosted by Peace Alliance Winnipeg and other social justice organizations.
We heard from Professor Diab and his lawyer Donald Bayne about how this case is an especially egregious example of the failures of the Canadian justice system and our biased extradition laws.
The injustice began in 2008 when the then University of Ottawa Professor was arrested by the RCMP for a 1980 Paris synagogue bombing. He has always maintained his innocence. Canada extradited Professor Diab to France in 2011, where he was imprisoned for more than three years, most of it in solitary confinement, despite never being charged with a crime. Today Diab is still being relentlessly pursued by the French legal system. Although in 2018 he was finally permitted to return home to Canada, as recently as April 2023 Professor Diab was convicted in absentia in France after an unfair trial.