Join Rally Demanding the Canadian Government Protect Hassan Diab from Further Injustice

Posted on by

Please join us for a rally in Ottawa on Sunday November 13, at 1:00 pm ET, demanding that the Canadian Government protect Hassan Diab from further injustice, stop the relentless persecution he is facing, and refuse any future request for Hassan’s extradition.

  • What: Rally Demanding that the Canadian Government Protect Hassan Diab from Further Injustice
  • When: Sunday November 13, 2022, at 1:00 pm ET
  • Where: At the Canadian Tribute to Human Rights monument, 220 Elgin St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

(For a list of other actions in November 2022, marking the 8th anniversary of Hassan’s extradition, click here.)

At the rally, Matthew Behrens (Social justice advocate; coordinator of the “Homes not Bombs” non-violent direct action network) will be MC.

Speakers will include:

  • Rev. Eric Meter (First Unitarian Congregation of Ottawa)
  • Eric Schiller (Retired Professor from the University of Ottawa, human rights advocate, and member of the Quakers in Ottawa)
  • Susan Spronk (Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) Board Member, Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at Ottawa University)
  • Michelle Weinroth (Independent Jewish Voices Canada, Writer)
  • Students from Professor Deborah Conners’ class, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University

Also, statements will be read from:

  • Don Davies (NDP Member of Parliament for Vancouver Kingsway since 2008)
  • Diana Ralph (Member and learning coordinator of Or Haneshamah Synagogue and co-cofounder of Independent Jewish Voices)

The Ottawa Raging Grannies will sing a song.

In April 2023, Hassan will face an unfair trial in France for a crime he did not commit. This is despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. In 2018, two French investigating judges dismissed all charges against him and freed him unconditionally. All the so-called “evidence” that was presented by France to justify Hassan Diab’s extradition in 2014 has been withdrawn, discredited, or rejected. France has offered NO new “evidence” against Hassan. On the contrary, the alibi evidence, proving that Hassan was not in France at the time of the 1980 Paris bombing, has proven unshakable.

PM Trudeau must honour the words he uttered in 2018: “I think, for Hassan Diab, we have to recognize first of all that what happened to him never should have happened.”

It is essential that we do everything possible to ensure that there will be no further miscarriage of justice. The Canadian Government MUST protect Hassan and refuse any future extradition request from France following the sham trial scheduled for April 2023.