Until recently, Hassan Diab’s life in Ottawa had begun to settle back into a quiet suburban routine: spending his days teaching sociology part time at Carleton University, taking his two youngest children to the park to play football, or going for an afternoon swim.
It had been well over a year since he was convicted in absentia for carrying out a deadly bomb attack on a Paris synagogue in 1980, and the media attention had largely quieted down. He was trying to move on with his life.
Diab, who is Lebanese Canadian, has consistently maintained his innocence, claiming he was in Beirut sitting university exams at the time of the bombing.
But in January, a new voice weighed into his case, returning it to the headlines. Elon Musk reposted an X post about Diab by Pierre Poilievre, leader of the country’s federal Conservative party. Musk added a remark: “A mass murderer is living free as a professor in Canada?” More than 21 million people saw the post.
For 71-year-old Diab, whose story is the focus of a new Canadaland podcast series that I co-host with Dana Ballout, the renewed attention from prominent rightwing figures has plunged his life back into a familiar turmoil.
With a general election that needs to be called before October, Diab fears that shifting politicians winds in Canada could lead to a new extradition fight.
“I just have to be careful. It’s like you are living in constant fear. It’s not easy, it’s like waiting for a ghost to appear from somewhere.”
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Aliza Shagrir, an Israeli film editor, was in Paris on holiday in October 1980, when she stopped at a grocery store on rue Copernic to buy figs.
Moments later, a blast ripped through the street. Shopfronts were blown out. Parked cars were reduced to twisted hunks of metal.
Ten kilograms of the explosive PETN had been hidden inside a motorbike parked outside a synagogue and timed to detonate at 6.30pm, when the congregation was due to be leaving. But services were running late, so the more than 300 worshippers were still inside when the bomb exploded. Shagrir was one of four passersby who were killed in the attack.
Her son, Oron Shagrir, said that the family never recovered from the loss. “She was 42 when she was killed. She was beautiful, joyful, very opinionated. In some ways, she was the centre of the family.”
The blast shocked the country. It was the first deadly attack targeting French Jews since the second world war, and in the following days, thousands of Parisians marched in solidarity with the Jewish community.
French police gathered a limited set of clues: a handwriting sample from his hotel registration card, and a police sketch based on witness testimony.
Together with the type of explosive used and a German intelligence report, authorities concluded that the attack was committed by the PFLP-OS - a now defunct offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
But it wasn’t until decades later, in 2007, after a new investigative judge in Paris named Marc Trévidic took over the case, that Diab became a focus of the investigation. His name appeared in an unsourced 1999 Israeli intelligence report, which included a list of people purportedly involved in the bombing.
Diab’s lawyer, Don Bayne, has long argued that the intelligence used to identify him is unreliable, saying: “It’s unknown sources. Unknown circumstances. Who said what? When? Is this a human source? Is this just something some analyst made up? We have no idea.”
Trévidic obtained a photocopy of an old passport belonging to Diab, which contained stamps showing travel in and out of Europe around the dates of the attack. Finally, he found a 1988 police interrogation record, in which one of Diab’s former university friends suggested that Diab was once involved with a political party linked to the PFLP.
Diab denies ever being involved with a political group. He says that he believes his passport was stolen in Beirut in 1980, and subsequently used by the bomber.
In 2008, Trévidic had completed his initial investigation and submitted an extradition request to the Canadian government.
Diab was getting ready to leave the house for his morning jog in November that year when police showed up. He was arrested and later released on bail.
As the case attracted increasing media attention, Ottawa citizens and human rights organisations grew alarmed at what they believed was insufficient evidence to justify Diab’s extradition.
Bernie Farber, a Jewish community leader who had initially welcomed Diab’s arrest, was following closely. “It came to a point where I just couldn’t believe that people didn’t understand that this was not the guy,” he said.
In April 2012, Robert Maranger, the judge overseeing the extradition hearings, delivered his verdict. He described the French case as “weak [and] replete with seemingly disconnected information”. But he was sufficiently persuaded by handwriting analysis gathered from five words written on the suspect’s hotel registration card. Despite expert testimonies strongly criticising the analysis, Maranger granted the extradition.
Diab’s appeals failed, and in November 2014, he was placed on an Air France flight bound for Paris, where he was met on the tarmac by French police and escorted to prison.
Eleven months into his detention, Diab received some welcome news; Trévidic’s term as investigative judge had come to an end, and two new judges would be reinvestigating the case.
They interviewed Diab at length, and travelled to Lebanon to gather testimony from former university classmates, who said they remembered Diab sitting exams in Beirut the week of the bombing.
Eventually, the judges ruled that there was insufficient evidence to keep Diab detained, and ordered his release. After more than three years incarcerated in Paris without trial, he was free to return home to Canada.
Three days later, Diab was welcomed at Ottawa airport by supporters – and by his wife, Rania, and his two children – the youngest of whom he was meeting outside prison walls for the first time.
The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, later voiced his support, saying that “what happened to Hassan Diab never should have happened”, and promised a government inquiry into his extradition.
For Diab, the past decade had felt like a kafkaesque nightmare – and now it looked like it might finally be over.
But his relief was short-lived.
The French judges’ decision was successfully appealed, and arrangements were made for a fresh trial in April 2023.
Diab was requested to attend in person, but without a new extradition order he was under no obligation to show up.
During the three-week Paris trial, state anti-terrorist prosecutors asked for a maximum prison sentence, saying there was “no possible doubt” he was guilty. Diab’s defence asked for him to be acquitted to “avoid a judicial error”.
No new evidence was presented during the three-week trial, and the handwriting evidence was thrown out after it was determined to be inconclusive.
The only material evidence brought up in court was a set of fingerprints and a handprint believed to belong to the bomber. Neither was a match for Diab.
But the court dismissed alibis presented by Diab, saying their explanations about the passport being lost and his presence in Beirut at the time of the attack were “variable” and “not very credible”.
On 21 April 2023, Diab was found guilty in absentia, and sentenced to life in prison. A warrant was immediately issued for his arrest.
In the knowledge he could be arrested at any moment, Diab attempted to reintegrate back into his old life, living back at home with his family, and working as a part-time professor at Carleton University.
In late 2024, the Jewish advocacy group B’nai B’rith issued a statement calling for Carleton to end Diab’s teaching contract, igniting a flurry of new interest in the case – particularly in the rightwing media.
Diab’s sociology department chair said while Diab’s current contract has ended, the department’s relationship with him had not changed.
Diab says his lectures were temporarily relocated out of concern for student safety, and he received death threats to his work email.
For now, his life hangs in an anxious limbo. He’s out of prison, but is followed by the constant dread that his government could accept another extradition request from France. “That’s the sword above your head, waiting to fall.”
