From a synagogue bombing in Paris, to an Ottawa classroom 40 years later

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Jordan Heath Rawlings The story begins with a terrorist attack, a bomb at a synagogue in Paris in 1980. It killed four people and injured dozens more. The story ends, at least so far, with a Canadian professor currently living in Ottawa. Being tried and convicted in absentia by a French court more than 40 years after the bombing, an empty chair sat in the courtroom in his stead. Those four plus decades between the bombing and the guilty verdict contain an investigation, an arrest, and a trial. Then new evidence, multiple denials, tensions between Canada and France. High enough to make Justin Trudeau step in a new trial, this guilty verdict. And now France wants the man they’ve convicted. That man’s legal team denies he was ever involved. And he says obviously that he’s not going to France, so will Canada make him after all, they’ve done that before. I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Leyland Cecco is a reporter for The Guardian, is based in Toronto. Hello, Leyland.

Leyland Cecco Hi Jordan. How are you doing today?

Jordan Heath Rawlings I’m doing very well, thanks. How are you?

Leyland Cecco I appreciate you having me on the show. I’m great.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Why don’t we start. With you taking me back to Paris, France, 1980. What happened? So it’s an October evening, a little after 6:00 PM You’ve got one of the more liberal synagogues in the city just filled with worshipers. More than 300 people are there to celebrate the Simat Torah holiday, the end of the Torah reading. You’ve got people excited for five bar mitzvahs that are gonna be that weekend. And all of a sudden the street is just rocked by an explosion. And someone had parked a Suzuki motorcycle outside the synagogue, loaded it with 20 pounds of explosives, and they’d initially planned to detonate it when congregants were coming out from the services.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Leyland Cecco And it would’ve been an absolutely disastrous attack and the images even of, of what happened are horrendous mangled cars, blown out windows, shattered glass. Four people are killed in the explosion. And these are people that were unfortunately walking by at the moment or across the street in a hotel.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Wow.

Leyland Cecco But inside glass ceiling collapses. A door is blown out and you have 46 worshipers all injured in, in many ways. What is the worst attack on the Jewish community in France since the second World War?

Jordan Heath Rawlings What do we know about, uh, the motivation behind the attack? Um, did anybody claim it? What happened in the immediate aftermath?

Leyland Cecco It’s a bit of a weird attack in that no one really clamor for responsibility, but investigators are fairly certain that it was linked to Palestinian, um, rights organizations that had been for years fighting a fairly. Aggressive and often violent campaign for recognition of, of the state of Palestine, and, and so you have to kind of contextualize this attack, both as part of the 1960s, 1970s armed attacks and aircraft hijackings that gripped a lot of the region, both in Europe and the Middle East at the time.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Leyland Cecco It was also, An attack that kind of foreshadowed a series of of attacks, um, throughout Europe in the, in the coming years. In August, the following year, a synagogue and Austria was attacked by Palestinian gunman that that killed two people. A few months later in, in Antwerp, in Belgium, three people are killed when a bomb goes off. That is linked to the p l O as well. So this was very much in line with how the organization had conducted. Uh, terrorist attacks, uh, both in Europe and in in the Middle East, and, and is very much part of, of a wave that had had swept through the region for, for kind of previous decades.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Now let’s talk about the man who is guilty or not at the center of this case. Uh, Lebanese Canadian, Hassan Diab. Who is he? How is he connected to all of this?

Leyland Cecco Well, so I think before we get to who he is, it’s also kind of important to point out that this is an investigation that, that was long, was drawn out, right? There was protests from, from not just the Jewish community, but also just French, French people over, over the fact that there were no. Culprits or,

Jordan Heath Rawlings mm-hmm.

Leyland Cecco Or, or no one had been charged in the attack and we’re talking decades where there was, there was no sense of justice for the attack in which four people had been murdered. And so there was a lot of pressure and frustration with the French government for what was seen as, as a slow moving and, and oftentimes incompetent investigation. Having said that, multiple decades after the attack happened in, in, in 1980, You get suspicion that, that a Lebanese Canadian sociology instructor was in some way connected to that, that attack. And so the French authorities in 2008 asked Canadian RC m p officers to arrest Hassan, who at the time is living in Ottawa on suspicion of, of, um, masterminding, if not being a part of the terrorist attack at that point, more than 20 years earlier.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Do we know where that suspicion came from and, and how the case, uh, against Diab developed?

Leyland Cecco There’s still a lot of murkiness around the evidence that is, is, is purported to link Diab to the bombing? No. We do know through unsealed documents that differential rely on intelligence from the German authorities that. Place, Diab in theory in France and also in Spain at the time. And, and Spain is critical cause they believe that the attacker entered and exited France via Spain. But have, having said that though, there’s a lot of shakiness surrounding the, the, the evidence that is purported to put Diab at the center of the attack. And, and I, I think it’s important to point out that when he is named, um, by French authorities and, and part of the extradition request, Friends, colleagues are absolutely shocked. Hm. Um, this is not a person they would’ve associated with having extremist beliefs. This is not a person they would’ve associated being a mastermind of a, of a bombing attack that targeted innocent civilians. And so there’s a sense of, of, of disbelief and of shock that ripples throughout the community. When the French authorities finally name after multiple, multiple years of, of purported investigations into the attack, they’re, they’re culprit in their suspect.

Jordan Heath Rawlings So French authorities ask the R C M P to arrest him in 2008. And this is where we’re gonna get into, I was gonna say the trial, but I guess the first trial, what happens after the arrest?

Leyland Cecco So Canada has what’s called the Extradition Act, and that was, uh, passed in 1999. And it basically allows foreign governments to request Canada, send back, um, someone who’s suspected of a crime in that country. So in the example of Diab, the French authorities, Suspect that Diab might have been complicit in the attack in 1980, and so they asked the federal government to arrest him and to have him sent back to France to face trial. Now I think it’s important to point out, just off, off the top, the Extradition Act is a piece of legislation that has garnered significant criticisms in recent years, and specifically over the DAB case itself. Because for many people who follow extradition Law, Canada’s Extradition Act has a number of shortfalls that have led to what people fear is miscarriages of justice. Hmm. And have put innocent people. In courtrooms across the world in which they often should not have been there?

Jordan Heath Rawlings Like what kind of shortfalls? What are we talking about here?

Leyland Cecco Well, so I think the extradition Act is, is interesting because it is a very rigorous piece of legislation that constrains those who fall under its purview. So if you’re a judge who is asked to assess an extradition case, all you’re asked to do is, is in theory, determine whether or not a person could be held on the charges that you’re being asked to consider and, and be fit to stand trial, you’re not asked to gauge the, the quality of the evidence. And so in the case of Hassan Diab, you have an Ontario judge who’s asked to begin the process. He looks at the evidence in, in, in many ways, kind of, he considers it junk. It’s not great. It’s marked by delays. You have handwriting that’s brought to the judge that that is purportedly dabs handwriting. But then the, the crown retracts, the experts, uh, a number of experts are, are kind of thrown out because they’re, their analysis is unreliable. And so the judge, you know, who’s, who’s looking at uh, dabs case, basically feels like he’s a rubber stamp cuz he doesn’t think it’s a good case, but he doesn’t have the ability to say no.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Leyland Cecco And so, Just from the beginning that, that you kind of see whether or not the case against Diab was a good one. Canadian officials are basically hamstrung in their ability to say, we don’t think this is a good case because all the French have to do is say, here is evidence, here is the charges. We will one day bring charges against this, this individual and, and so Canada, we would like you to extradite this individual so they can stand for trial in France. Another key criticism of the extradition Act is there’s no timeline, so in Diabs case, the French didn’t even have to have a case ready. They just had to say, we have evidence to suggest that he was involved in this bombing and, and we will charge him, but it doesn’t have to be a year, two, three years. There’s no timeline. So there’s a lot of frustration that that Canada’s extradition act doesn’t give much latitude to the people early on who would determine whether or not that case is even a good one. And I think Diabs cases, we’ll talk about really highlights where it falls short. Let’s talk about that case and what happened leading up to him with the extradition.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So what happened next, basically to Diab, so Diab was arrested by the RCMP and he went through what is called the authority to proceed process, which is when a judge marshals all the evidence, the, the French would, in this case, give it to the crown and the crown would act as a proxy to the, to the French prosecutors. And so the French relied quite heavily early on, on a hotel registration card from Paris that they said was. An alias of the attacker used to stay in Paris before fleeing back to Spain, and so they used samples of dabs handwriting from when he was a student at Syracuse University, and multiple experts gave conflicting evidence of whether or not this was actually dabs.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Leyland Cecco The judge who was, who was seen, um, the initial extradition proceedings was, was kind of a bit incredulous that this was the best evidence the French had marshaled. They were using some composite sketches as well of, of, of the attacker, but you had a judge who, who was very skeptical of the requirement that he extradite this individual and, and, and he was quite vocal about that, having said that, though, he was, he was, he was very much in the constraints of the extradition act and he was forced to say it. You know, I, I approved the extradition. The minister also approved the extradition. And so Diab was sent, um, to France in 2014 where he was put in a maximum security prison.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What happened when the trial was actually supposed to begin? He’s in prison in France. Uh, they are presumably ready to bring forward this evidence that’s already been presented to the Canadian Crown, if I’m getting this right. What happens then? Well, it, it’s a great question cuz I think you, you rightly point out all the pieces should have been in place, Uhhuh, Uhhuh, but instead we find out that there is no trial that’s actually set up. The charges haven’t been fully kind of formalized. The evidence isn’t really quite there and so you have Diab who had fought, you know, quite, quite hard to not be extradited to. France is now in a maximum security prison in in France at times in solitary confinement for at least three years before the prosecutors are ready to bring their case. And even when they do bring their case, it’s tossed out by, by French judges because it’s, it’s seen as insufficient and, and, and in many ways fairly weak. And, and, and pretty flimsy is a case. So the charges were eventually dropped after he’d spent time in prison after, uh, he’d been arrested in 2008. Uh, they were dropped in 2018. So, uh, 10 years between that and now that the charges have been dropped, that’s it. Then he returns to Canada, resumes his normal life and, uh, will never know who did it. But he lives happily ever after. Right. One would, would, wouldn’t think so. And I think for people who feel as though this is how the legal system should operate, you know, that would be the conclusion. Unfortunately, the French have, have repeatedly appealed, um, the lower courts that have tossed out the case and they’ve, they’ve brought it to higher and higher appeals courts. Hmm. And so Diab was recently on trial again for this, this alleged attack. And I think it’s important to point out not on any new evidence.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Huh?

Leyland Cecco Diab is still facing charges and, and was, was recently charged. And convicted under the evidence that the courts had previously said was too weak to bring to trial.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings But he didn’t go back to France for that trial. He wasn’t extradited again. There’s just a trial and he’s not there. Correct.

Leyland Cecco So he, the French never sent a new extradition request for Diab, and so he was tried what we call in absentia.In in the French courtroom in Paris, they actually left an empty chair for him to kind of represent the fact that he had refused to return to face trial. But I don’t think Diab and his supporters ever felt as though it would be a fair trial. And by fair trial, I mean one in which the evidence was seen is having a high level of integrity. So there’s a lot of frustration from Diab. He recently called the process Kafkaesque. His lawyer has suggested this very much represents a miscarriage of justice because. He was found guilty by a French court and he was sentenced to life in prison. Now he has refused to go back to France. Um, but whether or not Canada will send him is, is a different question.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Throughout all of this, what has Diabs defense been, um, and what do we know about? Why he was found guilty this time if the charges were thrown out last time.

Leyland Cecco So, Diabs defense has been fairly long running, which was that he was never in France and he was never in Spain.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Okay.

Leyland Cecco Records show that he was most likely, and we can’t say with certainty obviously, but he was most likely in Lebanon as a student. If you look at exam records from the time, um, that he was purported to have been, uh, a student at, at, in, in the, in the area. So DF has always said I was in Lebanon. I never traveled to France. I never traveled to Spain. He’s also said his passport was lost. Hmm. And there’s a suspicion that it could have been used by someone else to enter Spain and then by France. But this, this whole time, he has been fairly consistent in his story, that he never traveled to Spain. He never traveled to France, and he has had no involvement whatsoever in the attack. More than 40 years ago.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings And why was he convicted this time? If the charges were tossed last time? And as you point out, no different evidence.

Leyland Cecco You know, I think it, it speaks to the uncertainty of courtrooms and, and lawyers, you know, always say, last place you wanna end up is a courtroom because you never know what’s going to happen, right? And so in D’s case, previous courts had said this evidence isn’t great, but you know, often a courtroom trial can be a role of the dice. And in the end, he was convicted on a series of composite sketches, handwriting analysis that has been disputed by multiple experts. You have allegations that his, his passport was, was linked to Spain, where the attacker is believed to have fled. And so, Again, this verdict, even in France, is not necessarily seen as, uh, emblematic of, of a justice system working well.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Leyland Cecco It’s, it’s been tossed out by multiple lower courts, but there is a randomness to when you enter a trial about how that evidence will be perceived, how it’ll be marshaled through the system and, and, and what the outcome will be.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So that was just over a week ago, over 42 years after the initial bombing. What happens now? Uh, now that he’s been convicted, does Canada have to extradite him? Uh, have they given any indication, if they will, um, what happens next?

Leyland Cecco So, It’s unclear yet whether France will formally ask for his extradition, and I think that turns on the reality that they previously extra asked for his extradition. There was frustration in Canada. There was this whole rift over whether or not he was given a fair trial fast enough. So we don’t yet know if France will make the formal request for extradition after Dja was first released in 2018 and brought back to Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said, For all intents and purposes, this should never have happened. And then Attorney General Jodi Wilson Raybould ordered a review of how the federal government and Crown prosecutors handled the extradition. They were largely cleared of any kind of failings, but there has been calls for an overhaul of the extradition process. Canada is not legally obliged to send one of its own citizens back to France. It, it has a level of discretion and so I think in the event that we do see Diabs, extradition request from the French government. You might see a bit more flexing of that element of what government ministers can do, which is to deny the request. I think it’s important to also point out that France has a long history of not extraditing its own citizens back.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Huh.

Leyland Cecco And for decades, the R C M P has been requesting a priest who is facing multiple sexual assault charges against children in the Canadian North Inuit children. Despite the fact that the R C M P has issued an arrest warrant for this priest, Canada hasn’t yet formally asked for the extradition because it knows that France, by and large won’t send back its own citizens.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Hmm.

Leyland Cecco And so I think in many ways, the inequities of those cases, or this kind of disconnect between how Canada readily sent one of its own citizens to France to face fairly flimsy charges, and the fact that Canada yet hasn’t asked. For a French citizen to face justice just shows that there are pitfalls, there are holes. There are kind of failings in the way our extradition laws work in this country.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings If the evidence is so flimsy. But he has been convicted anyway on a second try. And as you mentioned, France doesn’t like to extradite its own citizens. I feel like there’s something missing here. I know you can’t read minds, but, you know, what are the political implications of this in France that somebody watching it from Canada might not understand why they’d come so hard after, uh, a perhaps not guilty person?

Leyland Cecco You know, the, the verdict is not one in which it’s been universally condemned or applauded. There is happiness, I think, from Jewish advocacy groups who say, you know, finally we do have our mastermind. We have charges. He has been convicted in court in a fair trial, and, and, and they would like to see him return back to France to face justice. These groups have long believed that Diab, is responsible for the attack. And so I think there is happiness or at least a sense of relief and, and maybe even a sense of justice that someone accused of the attack has been found guilty. I think there’s also skepticism because as we talked about earlier, you know, this is a case that really couldn’t get to the start line for a long time because there was concern that the, the, the integrity of the case wasn’t, wasn’t there. And so it’s also kind of kicked off bigger questions of how. Extradition should work between allies when you do have concerns over the i integrities of one’s core system. And I think it is, you know, it’s, it’s one thing to have a debate whether or not Canada should be sending people back to countries with poor human rights records in which the prospect of a fair trial is, is, is, is anything but a faint glimmer.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Mm-hmm.

Leyland Cecco But France is an ally. France is a, is, you know, is a democracy with a robust judicial system. And so I think it’s, it’s gonna. You know, kickoff difficult questions and, and, and Canada, you know, doesn’t want to set a, a bad precedent for refusing an extradition request from a, a fairly close ally. So, you know, I think it’s, it’s gonna get a bit murky. I, I don’t wanna prejudge and so I, I don’t know if the French will actually make a second extradition request. And I also don’t know if the Canadian government would ever, in this case honour it because the prime minister’s been pretty clear previously that the first instance should have never happened. And I, and he’s been quite clear that, you know, he’s weighed in sea what the French counterparts do, but it’s hard to imagine a case that has kicked off internally within Canada. Significant questions over, over whether there should be an overhaul to the extradition laws in this country. It’s hard to see whether or not the government, which does have the discretion, decides to send them back. And so this this case really, you know, complicates matters both for, for Canada and and for France.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if that request ever comes. Leyland, thank you so much for this. A fascinating story.

Leyland Cecco Fascinating, frustrating, and I think as you rightly point out, you know, still even more waiting involved.

Jordan Heath Rawlings Leland Checo reporting on this file for The Guardian. That was the big story, and if you want more, you should know where to go by now. The Big Story podcast.ca. You can listen to over 1200 episodes on that website. They are all there all the way back to our first one in June of 2018. You can talk to us and follow us on Twitter at the big storyFPN. I have no idea where we’ll go if Twitter becomes even more of a cesspool, but for now, we’re still there and you should follow us and you can write to us hello at the big story podcast.ca. The big story is available wherever you get podcasts, and it’s also available on smart speakers if you ask them to play The Big Story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.