Neve, Aiken and Champ: Canada’s Next Justice Minister Must Defend Hassan Diab’s Rights
“Will France have the audacity to seek Diab’s extradition a second time? Will it instead opt to try him in absentia, itself a flagrant violation of fair trial rights? Either way, Diab and his family, who have been trapped in a Kafkaesque world of injustice for 14 years, currently face the prospect of several more years of the same. It is intolerable and it must end. That is why we recently joined more than 100 lawyers and legal academics in an open letter to Minister Lametti during the recent election, urging him to convey to French authorities that Canada will not in any way continue to participate in this profound miscarriage of justice.”
Read the full opinion piece by Alex Neve, Sharry Aiken, and Paul Champ in the Ottawa Citizen:
Should We Really be Handing Them Over?
“Under the current law, a state requesting extradition need only shows up with a summary of the evidence it claims to have. But that summary cannot be challenged or tested, says Robert Currie, a Schulich School of Law professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax. ‘It’s an unfair process.’… Currie says that the Diab case is an egregious example of how the Supreme Court’s intention in Ferras has failed. ‘If Hassan Diab could be committed for extradition, then there’s no meaningful way to challenge it at all,’ he says. ‘The judge just becomes a rubber stamp on the whole thing.’”
Read the full article by Dale Smith in the Canadian Bar Association’s National Magazine:
https://nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/law/in-depth/2021/should-we-really-be-handing-them-over