New in PJ Media:
The headline in Sunday’s Ottawa Citizen was strange: “‘The ordeal’ is not over for Hassan Diab after French court sentences him to life in prison.” Clearly, the Citizen’s sympathy is with Diab, despite the fact that he must have been convicted of something extremely serious to warrant being given life in prison. And the Citizen is not alone.
Hassan Diab is a darling of the Leftist political and media establishment, despite the fact that the crime he was convicted of committing was the bombing of the Rue Copernic synagogue in Paris during Shabbat services on Oct. 3, 1980. Four people were killed and 46 others were injured. Or given the Left’s increasing antisemitism, is the support he has received not despite the nature of his crime, but because of it?
Diab, a lecturer at Carleton University in Ottawa, didn’t attend his trial in Paris and scorned the proceedings. After he was convicted Friday, Canada’s state-funded CBC reported that he “expressed disappointment and called his situation ‘Kafkaesque.’” He added, “We hoped reason would prevail,” and said that it was “still devastating to know they pursued that biased road which led to the unfortunate decision.”
Diab’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, agreed, and decried the unfairness of the proceedings in Paris: “The evidence shows he’s innocent and yet they’ve convicted him. It’s a political result. It’s a wrongful conviction.” Maybe. It’s nothing unusual for people who have been convicted of crimes to insist upon their innocence, but Diab has Leftist friends in high places, including Justin Trudeau.
Randall Garrison, whom the CBC identifies as a New Democratic Party “justice critic,” declared: “The horrible conditions Dr. Diab suffered over flimsy and discredited evidence violated his rights and poisoned the process. Given that no justice has been served, New Democrats are demanding the government block any attempts by France to extradite Dr. Diab.” Amnesty International decried the case against Diab as “baseless and flawed.”
On the other side, however, Yonathan Arfi of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) was happy with the verdict, saying, “After 43 years of judicial wandering, justice is finally served for this deadly antisemitic attack. Everything must now be done to enforce the international arrest warrant. CRIF calls on Canada to cooperate with French justice.”
When asked if he would allow Diab to be extradited to France to serve his sentence, Trudeau said, “We will look carefully at next steps, at what the French government chooses to do, at what French tribunals choose to do. But we will always be there to stand up for Canadians and their rights.” However, it is not at all clear that anyone’s rights were violated in this case except those of the victims of the bombing.
There is more. Read the rest here.
notnolib says
Canada’s girlfriend Justin, aka Fidel’s boy, is a Jew-hater.
oren says
I very effective step to these kind of articles, is to add A declaration reminding the reader, that the canadian media and political class claims to be opposed to anti semitism, despite all evidence to the contrary. In G-d I trust.