Trial of the attack on the rue Copernic: the accused sentenced in his absence to life imprisonment

Hassan Diab, here in January 2018 in Toronto. AFP - LARS HAGBERG

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Forty-three years after the bombing of the synagogue on rue Copernic in Paris, which killed four people and injured dozens in October 1980, the sole accused, Hassan Diab, was sentenced this Friday, April 21 in his absence to life imprisonment.

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Is the accused guilty? ». "Yes," replied the Special Assize Court, which sentenced Hassan Diab to the maximum sentence and issued an arrest warrant against him. After three weeks of debate and nearly eight hours of deliberation, the Special Assize Court of Paris decided between the only two possible options in this singular trial.

The prosecution had requested this life sentence, the only "conceivable" for the 69-year-old Lebanese-Canadian academic, who is according to her, "without any possible doubt", the author of this anti-Semitic attack nearly 43 years ago, and the only one implicated in this case, one of the longest in French anti-terrorism. Unsurprisingly either, as the hearing was marked by two antagonistic theses, the defense had pleaded acquittal, asking the five professional magistrates to "avoid a miscarriage of justice".

The file is mainly based on intelligence, which as early as the 1980s attributed the attack – which has not been claimed – to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations (PFLP-OS), a splinter group of the PFLP. After a long dormancy of the investigation, new information in 1999 pointed to the alleged members of the commando, including Hassan Diab as the one who would have made the bomb before abandoning it in front of the synagogue.

A "central" photo

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Of this accused, whose chair remained empty in the courtroom, the court will have seen only black and white photos at various ages of his life, comparing them with the robot portraits of the man who had bought the motorcycle used for the attack, drawn by witnesses in 1980. Defence and prosecution will have fought especially around another photograph, that of poor quality of Hassan Diab's passport, at the heart of the prosecution. This passport, which contained, on dates surrounding the attack, stamps of entry and exit from Spain, the country from which the commando allegedly departed according to intelligence, had been seized in 1981 in Rome from an alleged member of the PFLP-OS. Its existence had not been revealed until 18 years after the fact.

The court considered that this "central piece" proved Hassan Diab's membership in this organization and that "material elements support intelligence" designating him as the bomber. It therefore rejected the "alibis" presented by the Lebanese-Canadian, who always assured that he could not be in France at the time of the facts since he was taking his exams at the University of Beirut. The "variable" and "not very credible" explanations of Hassan Diab on this passport "allegedly lost" did not win the conviction of the court, said its president, Christophe Petiteau. The defense had retorted, in vain, that "no material element, no evidence" could attest to the presence of the former sociology student in Paris during the attack.

Hassan Diab had initially benefited from a dismissal in January 2018. He was released and returned to Canada. This dismissal was overturned three years later by the Court of Appeal, which ordered the trial for murder, attempted murder and aggravated destruction in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

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Remedies may only be effective on the day on which the (arrest) warrant is notified. " to Hassan Diab, who will be able to "acquiesce" the decision or "oppose it," said President Petiteau. The outcome of a possible new extradition procedure is uncertain, the first, which was completed after six years, having strained diplomatic relations between France and Canada.

(

With AFP)

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