Documentary directed by Amar Wala and edited by Andrea Conte

The documentary, “Rubber Stamped: The Hassan Diab Story”, shows the impact of Hassan’s ordeal on his family. Hassan’s supporters and his Canadian lawyer, Don Bayne, talk about the miscarriage of justice and the risk of wrongful conviction.

* * *Dr. Hassan Diab is a Canadian academic who was extradited from Canada to France in 2014 in a case widely viewed as a wrongful conviction in the making. Since then, he has been imprisoned in France in a segregated unit, with only two hours per day out of his cell.

Dr. Diab was extradited based solely on a widely discredited handwriting report that the Canadian extradition judge described as “illogical”, “very problematic”, “convoluted” and “suspect”, even though Dr. Diab’s fingerprints, palm prints and physical description do not match those of the suspect. The case is anchored on secret, anonymous “intelligence” allegations, possibly gleaned from torture.

The Canadian extradition judge noted that the low threshold for evidence under Canada’s extradition law compelled him to order Dr. Diab’s extradition.

In 2016, a French investigative judge found “consistent evidence” supporting Dr. Diab’s innocence, concluding that he could not have been in Paris at the time of the 1980 bombing for which he is under investigation.

In May and again in October 2016, the French investigative judge ordered Dr. Diab’s release on bail, finding no grounds for his further detention. The French Court of Appeal overturned the release orders due to the political climate in France, and Dr. Diab remains imprisoned to this day.