“The charges are not sufficient”, assures the lawyer of Hassan Diab, suspected of having planted the bomb

On October 3, 1980, a Friday in autumn and the start of Shabbat, a detonation blew the windows of rue Copernic, overturned several cars and killed four people. At number 24, the interior of the synagogue is devastated. “There were several hundred people and among them several children,” said a journalist at the time. The trial of this attack opens on Monday, April 3, at the special assize court in Paris, 43 years after the events and in the absence of the sole accused.

An investigation and evidence at the center of the debates

Ten kilos of explosive concealed in the saddlebags of a motorcycle, bought by a man with a false Cypriot passport. It will take 19 years for a name to emerge: Hassan Diab. This student in Beirut at the time of the attack became a professor of sociology in Canada. The man, now 69, has always claimed his innocence and will not be there during these three weeks of hearing during which the investigation and the reliability of the evidence will be at the center of the debates.

Hassan Diab left free in Canada in January 2018 after having initially benefited from a dismissal in this case, one of the longest in French anti-terrorism. But his writing, his schedule, robot portraits and information from foreign services: this bundle of clues which is today worth a trial to Hassan Diab.

“The more serious the crime, the more national the trauma, the greater the pressure from the victims.regrets William Bourdon, the lawyer of the Lebanese-Canadian. And with regard to Hassan Diab everything focused on him saying: ‘that’s it, we have him, we have a suspect, it’s good’. The duty of justice is when the charges are not sufficient, and they are very far from it, in drawing the consequences”. Hassan Diab’s lawyer therefore hopes for an acquittal in three weeks.