Forty-three years after an anti-Semitic attack in Paris, the Canadian-Lebanese sociology doctor Hassan Diab was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday.
It was the trial of a faceless man. Without Hassan Diab, accused of having planted a bomb on a motorcycle parked in front of a Parisian synagogue, rue Copernic, on October 3, 1980. The attack left four dead and dozens injured.
In his absence, the judges tried to find out: is the Canadian-Lebanese sociologist the man seen by witnesses? Did he use the alias Alexander Panadriyu? Or is he innocent, as he keeps claiming? For the prosecution, “his absence [imposait] to ask for the highest penalty”. His lawyer M.e William Bourdon, fearing a “miscarriage of justice”, pleaded acquittal.
On Friday, the court found Hassan Diab guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. An arrest warrant has been issued against him. He will be able to appeal this decision for 10 days, as soon as the justice has given him the judgment. France has not made an extradition request for the moment.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau assured Friday that he “takes[ait] very seriously the importance of protecting Canadian citizens and respecting all their rights”.
“We hoped that reason would prevail,” Hassan Diab told reporters in Ottawa, speaking of a “difficult” moment and a “Kafkaesque” situation.
PHOTO LARS HAGBERG, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Hassan Diab
“A Lebanese known by the alias of AMER”
Hassan Diab was not an obvious suspect. German intelligence initially said that the bomber was “a Lebanese known by the assumed name of AMER, but whose real name is HASSAN”. This man would be part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
But, in 1980, “the DST [Direction de la sécurité du territoire] did not have any specific information on the people who had ordered this attack, ”admitted Louis Caprioli, at the helm. Eighteen years later, this ex-intelligence agent will write a note which will put the investigators on the track of Hassan Diab.
In 1999, the DST learned that a member of the PFLP had been arrested in October 1981 in Rome. He held several passports, including that of Hassan Diab, born in 1953 in Beirut. It is one of the centerpieces of the prosecution. Why was this document linked to the organization suspected of having ordered the attack on rue Copernic?
In 2007, Philippe Chicheil, agent of the DST, will try “to locate and identify all the members of the network whose names were mentioned in the note of 1999”. “One man stood out because he was the weak link on the judicial level: Hassan Diab. »
The life of the naturalized Canadian professor changes in October 2007. The journalist of the Figaro Jean Chichizola learns the name and address of the potential bomber of the rue Copernic attack. He flies to Ottawa to interview her. “I find that it very much resembles a composite portrait that was made 27 years earlier, except for the mustache,” said the journalist to himself.
Judge Marc Trévidic then instructed the case. He hears new witnesses, digs new leads, has Hassan Diab arrested and requests his extradition. For six years, he must bring elements to support his request. In 2011, while the Canadian judge Robert Maranger considers “the weak case” and “the prospect of a conviction unlikely”, the extradition is granted.
Materially, the file does not hold much. The exhibits were destroyed. On the two remaining papers of the time, touched by Alexander Panadriyu, no fingerprint of Hassan Diab. “This does not constitute an exculpatory element,” said the court.
Three elements work against it. He is credited with a friendship with established members of the PFLP. But “none of the witnesses questioned implicate them in Copernic”, underlines Jean-Marc Herbaut, investigating judge from 2015. A hotel sheet signed by Panadriyu is also central. Experts, French and Canadian, have compared the writing of Hassan Diab with that of the note. When some believe that they are the same, others doubt.
Returned to Canada
The Italian discovery of Hassan Diab’s passport in 1981 is supposed to say it all. There is a visa for Spain used between September 20 and October 7, 1980. Hassan Diab maintains that this passport was stolen, but doubts remain about the date.
April 1981 or September 1980? To clear him of the attack, it should have taken place in September, which he maintains. “If we admit that he was the terrorist of the PFLP, he must have learned that his passport had been seized in October 1981. I do not see him declaring a theft after the attack he had committed in Paris”, repeated Jean-Marc Herbaut, who had analyzed this point before dismissing the case in 2018.
Hassan Diab had been released, had returned home. In 2021, France had decided to judge him all the same. “This passport thesis is not credible,” the court ruled.
“Even if separately each of the charges may seem weak, the convergent set that they form in fact decisive elements”, hammered the Advocate General. As an alibi, Hassan Diab advances his presence in Lebanon in October 1980. To the judges, Nawal C., his ex-wife, assured: “I left Beirut for England on September 28, 1980, with my father . Hassan drove us to the airport. »
This dated journey and the university exams he claims to have passed in October are supposed to prove his claims. “It’s true that Hassan Diab is a few hours flight from Paris. He can fly away on October 3, make his move and then return to Beirut, detailed Jean-Marc Herbaut. But to admit this thesis is to admit that the information is false, that he did not go through Spain and that, therefore, there is no evidence against him. The Assize Court thought the opposite.
With Agence France-Presse