A Canadian professor who bombed a Paris synagogue was given a life sentence, more than 42 years after the heinous crime took place..Hassan Diab, 69, was found guilty by a court in Paris for planting a motorcycle bomb in the Rue Copernic on Oct. 3, 1980 in what was the first attack on French Jews since the fall of Nazi Germany 35 years prior..Four people were killed in the attack, with another 38 injured..A Lebanese of Palestinian origin, Diab obtained Canadian citizenship in 1993 and currently teaches sociology at a university in Ottawa..He was first named as a suspect following new evidence in 1999. In a decades-long investigation, French authorities requested extradition in 2007, a request which was agreed by the federal government seven years later..In 2018, French magistrates closed the case over a lack of evidence, but it was reopened in 2021 after an appeal was upheld in the Supreme Court..Diab and his supporters maintain his innocence, and he did not return to France for the trial.. Paris synagogueParis synagogue .The bomb was left in the saddle-bag of a Suzuki motorbike, and was timed to go off when the sidewalk would be packed with people leaving the synagogue..In 1999, Italian authorities revealed Diab’s passport had been found at Rome’s airport in 1981 containing stamps showing the holder entering and leaving Spain around the time of the synagogue attack..His defence team argued the passport was not in his hands at the time, and the stamps did not provide hard evidence that he was in France in October 1980..This is despite a French judge in Lebanon finding an official declaration for the lost passport, made in 1983 with a date of loss in April 1981. Under questioning, Diab told authorities he’d lost his passport just a month before the attack..Now convicted, it remains to be seen whether Justin Trudeau’s government will extradite Diab to serve his sentence..While Canada and France do have an extradition treaty in place, it states neither country is bound to extradite its own citizens.
