The trial of the motorcycle bomb attack on rue Copernic, which killed four people and injured dozens on October 3, 1980, continues, in the absence of the only accused, the Lebanese-Canadian Hassan Diab, who claims his innocence from Ottawa. This Friday, April 7, the court notably heard Marc Trévidic, the investigating judge behind the extradition request and the indictment of Hassan Diab in this case.
At the Special Assize Court of Paris, Laura Martel
When Marc Trévidic resumed instruction in May 2007, “it looks rather bad”: ” The case is legally complicated ” And ” on the material aspect, it is worse he said; the seals were accidentally burned, although a few items, such as the hotel card of the man who bought the motorcycle, are exhumed.
The judge mainly has a note from 1999, French intelligence, whose ” conviction ” that is'” Hassan Diab is the bomber “. “ But intelligence is not proof “, Underlines the magistrate, who is relaunching the investigations.
Despite some elements gleaned from German and Italian legal proceedings, deadlocks are multiplying. Marc Trévidic goes to Lebanon, but the cooperation is cut short. He goes to the United States to hear the ex-wife of Hassan Diab, she remains silent. In Canada, Hassan Diab himself refuses to explain himself.
However, there is its resemblance to the sketch of the bomber, his passport, with visas compatible with the attack, found in the hands of a man who turns out to be the nephew of Salim Abou Salem, head of the dissident branch of the PFLP to which the attack is attributed, or those experts who find Hassan Diab’s handwriting ” compatible with the hotel bill. In 2008, the judge therefore launched an international arrest warrant and an extradition request.
Marc Trévidic denies having investigated against Hassan Diab. ” An investigating judge should not use such a term, but frankly, I wanted to “make myself” Salim Abou Salem, because he is the leader of the terrorist group and, for me, he is responsible for what he happened at Copernicus and elsewhere “says the magistrate. ” Unfortunately, it did not happen like that, he is neither the first nor the last to pass between the drops. »
This man, if he is still alive, would still be in Lebanon, but ” untouchable “, he concludes.
►Read again: Trial of the rue Copernicus attack: the journalist and the suspect