Extradition Requests

Italy has an extradition treaty with Brazil, and has requested of that country that an Italian, convicted of murder, who escaped an Italian prison and found refuge in Brazil, be returned to Italy to continue his residence in incarceration, courtesy the Italian penal system. Brazil has chosen to overlook that extradition process, and to grant Cesare Battisti clemency.

French prosecutors have requested of Canada, with whom they too have an extradition treaty, that a Lebanese-born Palestinian with Canadian citizenship whom they would like to put on trial for his purported/alleged part in a PLFP 1980 synagogue bombing that killed four people and injured 40 be extradited to France. Hassan Diab is in protective custody, having experienced a series of court appearances while appealing his extradition.

Brazil's Supreme Court upheld the decision taken by then-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva against extraditing the former Italian left-wing guerrilla, ordering at that time his immediate release from prison. The Italian president, Giorgio Napolitano, has declared that decision a "grave wound" in relations between his country and Brazil. Italy sees an imperative to bring Mr. Battisti to justice.

In Canada, lawyers for Hassan Diab have assured an appeals court judge that their client is prepared to comply with stringent bail conditions which necessitated that he wear an electronic monitoring device, and observe restrictions on his movements, along with the imposition of a nightly curfew. Mr. Diab's most recent appeal to overturn the extradition order was refused by Justice Robert Maranger.

The former Italian guerrilla, Cesare Battisti, had been convicted of four murders in the 1970s, as a member of Armed Proletarians for Communism. He was facing life in prison. His 1981 escape enabled him to live in France until Paris approved his extradition to Italy in 2006, whereupon he fled to Brazil, where he was later arrested.

However, then-president Lula da Silva had decided to grant Battisti refugee status, despite an earlier Brazilian court ruling. The argument being that the escaped convict, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of four people, could face political persecution in Italy, if Brazil proceeded with the extradition.

The lawyers for Mr. Diab contend that their client will not receive a fair trial in France. That the prosecution is determined to bring the sad story of the bombing of the Paris synagogue on rue Copernic to an end, and to bring those responsible for the deaths of four innocents to justice, despite that their client is innocent, could not possibly have been involved. An obvious case of mistaken identity.

In the case of Cesare Battisti, whom the authorities in Brazil have discharged, enabling him to get on with his life outside Italy, as he sees fit within Brazil, the Italian Foreign Minister calls the situation "a slap in the face of the whole democratic world that fights terrorism"; that it is "shameful" Mr. Battisti may now lead a life of assumed leisure, sunning himself on a Brazilian beach.

In the case of Mr. Diab, there are thirteen sureties prepared to post between $5,000 and $100,000 for Mr. Diab's total $430,000 bail - who support the man's contention that he is resolutely "against any sort of racially, ethnically or religiously motivated discrimination or violence. I am innocent and these allegations are baseless." The situation awaits the judgement of federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.

And whatever Minister Nicholson decides - the defence is convinced the appeal to his intervention will be turned down, and Mr. Diab ordered removed from Canada and forwarded to France for trial - another appeal will result. Representing to this date, two years of appeals and court appearances in response to France's request for extradition.