A Canadian citizen will learn Monday if he will be extradited to France to face murder and attempted murder charges in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue.
On Oct. 3, 1980, plastic explosives strapped to a motorcycle ripped through the Paris synagogue on Rue Copernic, killing four and wounding dozens.
Witnesses placed a man resembling Hassan Diab at the scene, though his passport put him in Spain at the time of the bombing.
But the battle to keep Diab in Canada would appear to have been already lost, thanks to a handful of handwritten words on a hotel card and the nature of extradition law.
In February, Judge Robert Maranger ruled admissible a questionable French handwriting analysis that supposedly links Diab to the bombing.
At the end of May, Maranger denied defence lawyer Donald Bayne the opportunity to call experts in French handwriting analysis methods to critique the report. Bayne had already called three internationally renowned experts who spent days lambasting it.
Maranger appeared to embrace their criticism, calling the entire field of handwriting analysis a "pseudo-science" in his March decision.
He was even more contemptuous of the actual report, finding it "problematic," "very confusing" and that it contained "conclusions that are suspect."
Maranger nevertheless found he had no choice but to admit the report. Extradition law stipulates that evidence against an accused is assumed to be reliable unless the defence can prove it is "manifestly unreliable." It is "an extreme point," he ruled.
And since there was no evidence the French report's author was unqualified, the defence's damning rebuttals were for naught.
"Ultimate reliability is the stuff of trial, not an extradition hearing," Maranger said.
It is the looming trial that worries Bayne, who fears Diab will be unable to challenge the report in French proceedings.
More broadly, the presumptive reliability of foreign evidence - which does not have to meet Canadian evidentiary standards - sterilizes people's ability to challenge it, Bayne has said.
Prosecutors have argued there is a compelling circumstantial case and that under extradition law they need only show that there's sufficient evidence upon which a jury could convict.
French authorities allege Diab entered France with false papers, acting as part of a five-man hit team for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Diab supporters will rally at the courthouse ahead of Monday's 10 a.m. decision.
"(Extradition) comes across as an unfair process for the person sought," said organizer Donald Pratt, who went to graduate school with Diab.
"He's trying to keep his feelings in check about the situation," Pratt said.
If Maranger decides to extradite Diab, the university professor plans to appeal, Pratt said.
It has been 2 1/2 years since Diab was arrested in November 2008.
He has been living under strict conditions since he was granted bail in March 2009.