On October 3, 1980, a bomb attack targeting the synagogue on rue Copernic in Paris killed four people and injured dozens. Almost 43 years later, the trial finally opened on Monday April 3 before the special assize court in Paris, but without the only accused, Hassan Diab.
At the start of the hearing, all eyes turn first to the empty box. Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor who has always maintained his innocence, remained in Canada where he resumed his life after spending three years in pre-trial detention in France. He stayed there out of cowardice “, castigates the Advocate General from the outset. ” Beyond the lack of confidence, it is a great infamy done to the jurisdiction and to this file, while we have been waiting for 43 years and Hassan Diab is not helpless in the face of justice, he has on the contrary shown over the years that he knows all the mysteries “, laments the magistrate.
This incisive tone makes the defense jump. ” I regret the immediate attack from the Advocate General who wants to portray Hassan Diab in the most pejorative light “, retorts Me Bourdon. The lawyer points out that if justice owes this trial to the victims », the absence of his client is « perfectly understandable “. Hassan Diab” responded to all calls […]. But what human being who professes his innocence and knows that the vagaries of justice means that he could be sentenced to life would do otherwise asks the council. Hassan Diab’s choice is therefore “ humanly respectable and in no way the signature of cowardice “, he concludes.
Then comes the time to call the people who are supposed to be heard. And here we are already touching on the major difficulty that the court will have to face during this trial: the canonical age of the file. Because as the clerk lists the identities, it is clear that nearly half of the civil parties, experts and witnesses are deceased or no longer able to appear.
“ It’s good that the trial is taking place […]. 43 years later, it should have taken place a long time ago, but it is taking place today and we will see what happens “, reacts to the press Corinne Adler, one of the few civil parties present at the hearing. As a teenager, she was celebrating her bar mitzvah in the synagogue on rue Copernic, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, when a bomb placed on a motorcycle exploded outside, killing four people.
The first witnesses
The investigation had attributed the attack – not claimed – to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations (PFLP-OS), a dissident group of the PFLP. The first witness heard at the trial, an investigator from the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI) returned in the afternoon to the “ bygone era of this pro-Palestinian and Marxist-Leninist movement, which had popularized in the early 1970s hijackings.
For this investigator, heard anonymously by videoconference, we find in the attack on rue Copernic the “ paw of the PFLP-OS, which did not claim responsibility for its terrorist actions and which is accused of being behind several bomb attacks in the 1980s against Jewish targets. Hearing after him, a former Syrian journalist, presenting himself as a connoisseur of the Arab world, is not of the same opinion and imputes the attack on rue Copernic to the group “ Abu Nidal”, a dissident branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The Advocate General is annoyed, questions the “ legitimacy » of this witness who was not « in contact with the judicial investigators or members of the PFLP ” but who ” strikes at this bar that the PFLP does not attack the Jews “.
The hearing will be this Tuesday devoted to the crime scene, before addressing the various incriminating and exculpatory elements against Hassan Diab. Verdict expected April 21.
► Read also : Forty-three years later, the trial of the rue Copernicus attack opens in Paris
(With AFP)