Liberals' Neglect of Hassan Diab a Scar on Canada's History

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/michelle-weinroth/liberals-neglect-of-hassan-diab-a-scar-on-canadas-history_a_23008690/
Date Written:  2017-06-30
Publisher:  Huffington Post
Year Published:  2017
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21071

An innocent Canadian citizen has been wrongly incarcerated by foreign powers and torn away from his family, but our country's leader seems unfazed.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

New evidence, from independent witnesses, reveals that Diab was writing exams in Lebanon during the Paris incident. The alibi, along with much other compelling material, irrefutably confirms Diab's innocence. And yet, Diab remains behind bars, his release being thwarted by French officials who seek to raise their country's punitive fist in the face of terrorism. These men have made the innocent Diab pay a colossal price for their political charade; they have violated human rights norms, according to Amnesty International, and made a mockery of France's court procedures.

Diab's case is among the most flagrant miscarriages of justice and deemed unprecedented in France's history. Singular as it is, it is uncannily reminiscent of the Dreyfus affair, the case of French artillery captain, Alfred Dreyfus, who, due to rising European anti-Semitism, was "falsely convicted of passing military secrets to Germans" in the 1890s. Today, Dreyfus's ghost returns in the guise of a scapegoated Muslim: a casualty of anti-Arab racism. The former head of Amnesty Canada, Roger Clark, has not hesitated to note that the travesty engulfing Diab is the consequence "of widespread Islamophobia." Compounded with such xenophobic angst is France's fear of appearing "weak" in the face of terrorism. Yet as French authorities don the cloak of discipline and severity, mercilessly punishing the wrong man, they yield, in craven weakness, before the crime of injustice, allowing it to proliferate unchecked.