OTTAWA — A Crown prosecutor in Ottawa last week asked Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger to reject defence claims that France manipulated evidence or misrepresented key facts in the extradition request for alleged terrorist Hassan Diab.

Defence contentions about the alleged French wrongdoing was “a teetering house of cards that won’t be standing much longer,” Crown attorney Claude LeFrancois said, according to a report in the Ottawa Citizen. He said claims by defence lawyer Donald Bayne that France had manipulated evidence were “preposterous.”

In court documents, LeFrancois also stated, “The abuse alleged represents a direct attack on the conduct of French prosecuting authorities.”

Earlier, Bayne had asked the court to stay extradition proceedings against Diab, a Lebanese-born former sociology professor who is alleged to have planted a bomb in a motorcycle saddlebag outside Paris’ Rue Copernic synagogue in 1980 that killed four passersby and wounded more than 40.

Bayne argued that evidence provided by France may have come from unknown sources, perhaps foreign intelligence agencies, including those of Germany and Israel, and may have been obtained by torture.

He also alleged that French evidence was full of “contradictions, inaccuracy and omissions” which amounted to a failure of due diligence and perhaps “abusive manipulation.”

Responding to Bayne’s assertions, LeFrancois said the defence lawyer had accused lead French prosecutor Marc Trevidic of obstructing justice.

“That is a very serious accusation to level at any of our extradition partners,” he said. “In my 13 years of practice in this area, I have never heard anything so sinister directed at a foreign state.”

“There is no evidence that any of the ‘misrepresentations,’ if misrepresentations at all, were other than inadvertent,” he said.

Handwriting analysis provided by France showed a high degree of probability that Diab signed a Paris hotel slip under a false identity, which was also used to purchased the motorcycle used in the bombing. LeFrancois said it is up to the trial judge, not one presiding over an extradition case, to determine validity of the evidence.

Diab, 56, has denied all charges against him and said he was a student in Beirut at the time.