On October 3, 1980, a bomb attack on the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris killed four people and injured dozens. The trial opens on Monday, April 3, but without the sole accused,...Forty-three years later, the trial of the attack on the rue Copernic opens in Paris The remains of the synagogue on Rue Copernic, where the bombing took place on October 3, 1980. On the right, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris. AFP / Delmas Text by: RFI Follow 5 min On October 3, 1980, a bomb attack on the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris killed four people and injured dozens. The trial opens

Forty-three years later, the trial of the attack on the rue Copernic opens in Paris

The remains of the synagogue on Rue Copernic, where the bombing took place on October 3, 1980. On the right, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris. AFP / Delmas

Text by: RFI Follow

5 min

On October 3, 1980, a bomb attack on the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris killed four people and injured dozens. The trial opens on Monday, April 3, but without the sole accused, Hassan Diab.

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Barring a huge surprise, Hassan Diab is not expected to appear at the opening of the hearing on Monday. The Special Assize Court of Paris, which has jurisdiction over terrorism, should therefore try him in absentia. The 69-year-old Lebanese-Canadian academic had notified his choice to the president of the court during an examination for discovery. "He has no reason to change his position," one of his lawyers, William Bourdon, told AFP.

This absence prompts Patricia Barbé, civil party in this trial, to approach it with "caution". "I don't know what dimension it can take at the level of the trial, but it's quite surreal," she confides to the microphone of Laura Martel, of the France service of RFI. Patricia Barbé was 16 years old, on October 3, 1980, when her father, a master driver, was killed by the explosion of the bomb while waiting in front of the synagogue of the rue Copernic, in the sixteenth arrondissement of Paris.

That Friday, Shabbat night, 320 worshippers gathered at the headquarters of the Israelite Liberal Union of France when ten kilos of pentrite on a motorcycle parked outside exploded. The canopy above the rabbi collapsed. Local residents see their armored door blown out. A couple and their children find themselves propelled from the first floor onto the public road. In the street, a vision of apocalypse: flames, cars on fire, others turned over, lifeless bodies, bloodied or under the rubble. Result: four dead and forty wounded.

Attack attributed to PFLP splinter group

In the aftermath of this first attack targeting the Jewish community since the Liberation, thousands of people spontaneously gathered in front of the synagogue. In the procession of demonstrators reaching the Champs-Élysées, the Prime Minister's statements the day before fuel anger. Raymond Barre had expressed his "indignation" at "this odious attack that wanted to hit Israelites who were going to the synagogue, and which hit innocent Frenchmen who crossed the rue Copernicus".

The police first dig the trail of the extreme right. Without success. Never claimed, the attack was finally attributed to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations (PFLP-OS), a splinter group of the PFLP. Years go by, governments come and go, and the file seems to be stalling. "We are facing a slowness of justice to settle this case which is totally surreal, criticizes Patricia Barbé, punctuating her reflection with a nervous chuckle. For thirty years, we remained silent, and then for a dozen years, we have been immersed in this issue again.

In 1999, Hassan Diab was named by intelligence as the one who made and planted the bomb. He was extradited and imprisoned in France in 2014 after a lengthy procedure. He left for Canada in January 2018 after being dismissed. The investigating judges considered, against the advice of the prosecutor's office that had appealed, that the charges against him were not "sufficiently conclusive". His referral to the assizes was finally ordered three years later.

Hassan Diab, who will be tried for murder, attempted murder and aggravated destruction in connection with a terrorist enterprise, faces life imprisonment. The sociology professor, who assures that he then took his exams at the University of Beirut, "protested from the first minute of his innocence". He "trusts his lawyers and we will argue forcefully that this man cannot and should not be convicted," insists Mr. Bourdon.

In the meanders of geopolitics and a sprawling procedure

For three weeks, the special assize court will plunge back into the meanders of geopolitics and a judicial procedure that required international letters rogatory in twenty countries. The prosecution points to the former Beirut student's resemblance to robot portraits taken at the time, testimony from a couple claiming he belonged to Palestinian groups in the early 1980s, and comparisons between Diab's handwriting and that of a hotel card filled out by the man who bought the motorcycle. These handwriting reports were hotly debated during the investigation and should be debated again during the trial.

► Read also: Copernic Street attack: the maze of a long investigation (2008 article)

The central piece of the file remains the seizure in 1981 in Rome of a passport in the name of Hassan Diab, with stamps of entry and exit from Spain, country from which the commando would have left, on dates consistent with the attack. "He was in Lebanon at the time of the facts, we establish it," retorts William Bourdon. Former students of the university and Hassan Diab's ex-wife had corroborated his statements, recalls his defense. The two investigating judges who had signed the dismissal order, and who are summoned to appear, had deemed it "probable" that the accused was in Beirut in October 1980.

In requesting the dismissal of the Lebanese-Canadian, the public prosecutor had considered that the "doubts" about his presence in Paris during the attack deserved to be examined by an assize court. "The issue of the trial is acquittal or life, it is quit or double," notes Mr. Bourdon. Patricia Barbé, she simply hopes that justice goes to the end of the file in order to be able to "turn the page". "We are obviously not in the same state of mind as 43 years ago, because we had to move forward, make our lives, but we hope for a way out, whatever it is. " The verdict is expected on April 21.

Forty-three years later, the trial of the attack on the rue Copernic opens in Paris

Forty-three years later, the trial of the attack on the rue Copernic opens in Paris

Attack attributed to PFLP splinter group

In the meanders of geopolitics and a sprawling procedure

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