Rania Tfaily can't bear to see an innocent man sit in jail.
That, she said, is why she's willing to let her unfaithful husband, Hassan Diab, live with her again if he is released on bail, pending his extradition hearing relating to murder charges in France.
"I believe he's innocent," Ms. Tfaily told the Ontario Superior Court today, the fourth day of Mr. Diab's bail hearing. "Would I ever forgive myself if I let an innocent person stay in jail, just because I'm jealous that he had sex with another woman? No."
Ms. Tfaily, who married Mr. Diab in a religious but non legally-binding ceremony in 2006, was the final witness to testify in his defense. The couple lived together in Ms. Tfaily's condominium in Ottawa after their marriage, but Mr. Diab moved out last summer to an apartment in Gatineau, where he lived until his arrest in November, 2008.
Mr. Diab, 55, is charged in France with murder, attempted murder and the destruction of property for his alleged role in the 1980 bombing of the Copernic Street synagogue in Paris. Four people died in the blast.
In her testimony, Ms. Tfaily said she no longer loves Mr. Diab, who carried on an affair behind her back and only confessed after she had read about it in newspaper reports, during his first bail hearing in December, 2008.
Mr. Diab was denied bail after that first hearing, but the decision was quashed by an appeals court because Mr. Diab could not read the French-language documents entered in evidence from France.
At the current bail hearing, Ms. Tfaily said that she would be willing to supervise Mr. Diab, and even would commit to staying home with him every evening and night if such curfew conditions were imposed as part of his bail.
She said she is willing to undertake this responsibility because she believes he is innocent; she disagrees with the tactics the RCMP used when they had Mr. Diab under surveillance from January to November, 2008; and because the conditions at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre are "horrible... even inhumane."
"It is not out of love," Ms. Tfaily stressed several times on the witness stand. "He is a nice person, but I'm not in love with him."
Ms. Tfaily said that she cannot believe that Mr. Diab would ever have carried out a terrorist bombing, because it is not consistant with his character and beliefs.
'I know that he is disgusted by mass killing of innocent people... He is opposed to dividing the world into us versus them."
In her cross-examination, Crown prosecutor Suzanne Schriek cast doubt on whether Mr. Diab could be trusted to be honest with Ms. Tfaily during his bail, given their rocky marital history.
Mr. Diab also retains close relations, and some joint bank accounts, with his first wife, Nawal Copty.
But Defense lawyer Don Bayne, who began his closing argument this morning, slammed the Crown's attempts to keep Mr. Diab in jail.
"I have never had a bail hearing focused so much on lawful travel and relationships with women," Mr. Bayne said. "I'm unaware that prior relationships with women has ever been cited as a ground for detaining somebody."