The Jerusalem Post on Monday reported a Lebanese professor of sociology named Dr. Hassan Diab, convicted by a French court of involvement in a 1980 bombing that killed four people at a synagogue in Paris, is teaching a course on “social justice in action” at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Diab is not just one of those radical university professors with some dark business in his distant past – he is an active fugitive from international justice, with an outstanding warrant for his arrest from France on terrorism charges.
The attack linked to Diab was perpetrated at the Rue Copernic synagogue on October 3, 1980. It was the first attack to target Jews in France since World War II. It served as the template for many subsequent terrorist attacks on houses of worship (including mosques, when groups like the Islamic State attack the “wrong” sort of Muslim in the Middle East).
The subsequent investigation has often been cited as a prime example of determined law enforcement bringing a terrorist to justice – temporarily, as it turned out – or, from the perspective of Diab’s defenders, an out-of-control prosecution harassing an innocent man for decades.
The bomber left an explosive device in the saddlebag of a motorcycle outside the synagogue, timed to detonate when maximum carnage could be inflicted on Jews emerging from religious services. As luck would have it, departure from the synagogue was delayed that day, so the bomb detonated early, inflicting far less death and injury than intended.
The results were still horrific, with four dead and 46 injured from the blast. Investigators originally believed the perpetrators were neo-Nazis, but by the end of 1980 it was clear the perpetrator was from the Middle East.
It took a long time to narrow that perpetrator down to Hassan Diab but, once his identity was determined, French prosecutors said there was never another serious suspect in the case. He allegedly operated as part of a larger cell whose other members were never identified. French prosecutors believe Diab both constructed and planted the Rue Copernic bomb.
Some of the key evidence against Diab came from the former Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall, specifically a passport of Diab’s that was recovered from a senior leader in a terrorist group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – Special Operations (PFLP-SO).
The passport had stamps that indicated Diab left Spain in time to carry out the Rue Copernic attack and returned soon afterward. Diab was of Palestinian extraction but was living in Lebanon at the time.
The passport did not conclusively prove Diab was in France for the attack and his defense challenged other evidence as inconclusive, such as his alleged signature on a hotel registration form. Diab had friends who were willing to testify he was in Beirut taking university exams at the time of the attack.
Diab was not identified by name until 1999, almost 20 years after the attack and six years after he obtained Canadian citizenship to become a sociology professor in Ottawa. France issued an international arrest warrant for him in 2007, and Canada agreed to extradite him in 2014.
French magistrates threw out the case against Diab for insufficient evidence in 2018, but their ruling was successfully appealed in 2021. The appeal was upheld in France’s Supreme Court, the first time the court has reopened a terrorism case.
Diab returned to Canada in 2018 after three years of detention in France, even though he was supposed to be under house arrest after he was released. He was tried in absentia in April 2023, 43 years after the synagogue bombing. His refusal to attend the trial infuriated both French officials and Jewish families seeking closure from the bombing.
Diab, who is now 70 years old, was found guilty on terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison on April 21, 2023. The court issued an international warrant for his arrest. Speaking from Ottawa, Diab maintained his innocence and dismissed his conviction as “Kafkaesque.”
Family members of Rue Copernic victims told the Jerusalem Post on Monday they were outraged to learn Diab is a sitting professor in sociology at Carleton University in Ottawa, teaching a course called “Social Justice in Action.”
The sons of bombing victim Aliza Shragir, an Israeli television presenter at the time of her death in 1980, said it was “outrageous that an academic institution that is supposed to promote values of equality and justice decided to employ a cold-blooded murderer, who was unanimously convicted in a court in France.”
“Apparently carrying out a murderous terrorist act against a Jewish target does not go against the values of Carleton University,” they said.
The Israeli consul general in Toronto, Idit Shamir, said Shragir was the mother of a friend, so Diab’s position at a Canadian university was a personal blow.
“A French court gave him life for murdering four souls and maiming 46, yet Carleton University rewards him with a teaching position? This isn’t just a failure of justice. It’s spitting on the graves of Jewish victims,” Shamir said.
B’nai Brith Canada also found Diab’s teaching position “unconscionable” and said it was “deeply disturbing” that Carleton University ignored its request to terminate him. B’nai Brith Canada also objected when Diab was hired by Carleton in 2009 to teach introductory sociology, and on that occasion, the university canceled Diab’s contract.
Carleton is standing firmly behind Diab this time, describing him as “unjustly accused” on its website and touting lectures in which he told his version of the Rue Copernic story. The university’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology page loads with a button labeled “Support for Hassan Diab” that links to a demand for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to guarantee that Diab will not be extradited to France again.
Diab has been working for Carleton University since 2006 and, aside from responding to B’nai Brith’s complaining in 2009, the institution has actively promoted and defended him, including a rally it organized in 2022 to insist on his innocence.
Canada’s National Post observed that the entire course outline for the class Diab is teaching “seems to consist of Diab reiterating his innocence.”
“The course puts central emphasis on miscarriages of justice in the context of Canadian extradition law, with close examination of a high-profile extradition case that highlights the pertinent issues,” the course outline reads. Students who take the course quickly discover that the “high-profile extradition case” is Diab’s own.
