MPs calls for changes in Canada’s extradition law amid ‘flaws’
Global News
A committee report urges the government to make administrative changes to the process for sending people to face prosecution and incarceration abroad.
The Liberal government should undertake a “comprehensive reform” of Canada’s extradition law as soon as possible to prevent “further injustices” due to shortcomings, a House of Commons committee recommends.
In addition to calling for an overhaul of the Extradition Act, a report from the justice and human rights committee urges the government to make administrative changes to the process for sending people to face prosecution and incarceration abroad.
During hearings earlier this year, MPs heard about cases “cited as evidence of real harms resulting from flaws in our existing legislation and process and as examples of injustices that will likely continue to occur in the absence of reform,” the committee’s recent report says.
Dalhousie University law professor Rob Currie, one of the longtime critics of the extradition system who appeared before the committee, welcomed the committee’s findings.
“They really heard us,” he said in an interview. “It shows great understanding of the problems that we were pointing out.”
Advocates of reform have long highlighted the case of Ottawa sociologist Hassan Diab, a Canadian citizen who was extradited to France and imprisoned for over three years, only to be released without even being committed to trial for a 1980 attack on a Paris synagogue.
Diab, who has always claimed innocence, returned to Canada. But he was later tried in absentia in Paris for the bombing that killed four and wounded 46.
A French court sentenced him to life in prison in April and issued an arrest warrant, meaning he could once again face extradition.