PARIS -- Hagai Shagrir remembers Oct. 3, 1980, as the day when “the dearest part of my family was killed.”
It was on that day that someone planted a bomb in an abandoned motorcycle in front of the Copernic Street synagogue in the posh 16th district of Paris.
Mr. Shagrir was visiting the city from Jerusalem with his mother, Aliza Levy. When the bomb went off, Ms. Levy was one of four people on the street killed. Mr. Shagrir, then 16, escaped the attack only because he decided to return to their hotel around the corner from the synagogue while his mother continued shopping for a gift across the street.
But he says he was “not so happy” when he read reports in the French newspaper Le Figaro last year that police had identified Ottawa sociology professor Hassan Diab as the bombing suspect or when Mr. Diab was arrested in Ottawa last month.
“I cried a lot when I was a young boy,” he said from his home in Jerusalem. “But over the years, it was easier for me to think about it as a kind of destiny and not to give a name or a face to someone who could do something so vicious. So to suddenly have a face and a name was a very difficult feeling.”
Mr. Shagrir said Mr. Diab’s arrest has finally helped him come to terms with his mother’s death. Members of the Copernic Street synagogue, many of whom were attending Friday night service when the bomb went off, say they also hope the arrest will finally close a painful chapter in the life of the century-old Liberal congregation.
Synagogue vice-president Odette Sertok said she believed that after 28 years with no arrests, the police had long ago dropped the case. “I felt it was something that was not of great importance [to investigators] and that has always been very painful. So to me this is very satisfying,” she said.
The long delay “was very difficult for us and I imagine for [Mr. Diab], if he really is the bomber,” synagogue president Claude Bloch said. “I don’t speak of vengeance, but it’s important for us to know who wanted to hurt us, who gave the order to kill people on the street.”
Mr. Bloch said the service was just finishing when the blast occurred. Although the bomb had been left to the side of the building, the force of the explosion shattered a 1920s-era stained glass dome at the front of the synagogue. Several people, including Mr. Bloch, were cut by the glass shards that fell from the ceiling.
He says the bomb was likely timed to go off after the service ended and people were leaving, but the rabbi was running late that day so the congregation was still inside. Most of the 10 people injured and all four of those killed were passersby. They included Ms. Levy, Michel Barbe, a driver for one of the members of the synagogue, Portuguese labourer Hilario Lopez Fernandez, and Philippe Boissou, a boy who was riding his bicycle.
Although the death toll was smaller than it could have been, the bombing traumatized France. It occurred after months of harassment and attacks against Jewish targets in the country and was the first to cause casualties. Hundreds of thousands of people across France marched in protest and a few days later the French parliament was suspended to pay homage.
Police at first suspected that members of neo-Nazi groups were involved and then talked about an obscure group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which they now say Mr. Diab was associated with. For years, there was little progress on the file. But arrest documents filed by the French police suggest that various police and spy services had information pointing to Mr. Diab all along.
According to arrest documents filed in court by the French police, the Israeli secret service Mossad had connected the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to the Copernic Street bombing by 1982. They say Mossad offered Micha Shagrir, Ms. Levy’s husband and Hagai’s father, the chance to meet one of the suspected bombers in Lebanon in 1982 while he was working as a military correspondent. But Micha Shagrir refused.
“I didn’t know what to say and what to do. It was a subject for our authorities to investigate more,” he said.
Mr. Shagrir, now a well-known Israeli filmmaker, said he subsequently tried to get information several times “but almost never succeeded.”
The arrest documents also say that in 1999 the German secret service identified a man named Hassan Diab as the person who made the bomb and put it in front of the synagogue. But it was only last year, when the original investigating judge retired and a new investigator, Marc Trevidic, took over, that French police found Mr. Diab in Ottawa.
The arrest documents link Mr. Diab to a series of fake passports that investigators say were used to enter Spain and France before the bombing. They include police sketches made after the attack and analysis of Mr. Diab’s handwriting.
The document also says that information from the German spy agency shows Mr. Diab placed another bomb near a synagogue in the diamond district of Antwerp, Belgium, in October, 1981, a year after the Copernic Street blast. That attack killed three people and injured more than 100.
Mr. Diab says his arrest is a case of mistaken identity, and he was not in Paris or Antwerp at the time of the attacks.
Mr. Bloch says life at the synagogue improved after the attack. He says attendance at the congregation grew almost immediately, partly because French Jews wanted to show “that we are still here. They said, ‘You attacked us but we are still going to continue.’ ”
Security outside the synagogue also increased. Posters on inside doors tell members what to do if they see a suspicious person or object outside. During services now, the entrance is guarded by young male volunteers who belong to a special security force that guards Paris synagogues.
Two weeks ago, Hagai Shagrir finally returned to Paris for the first time since the bombing. Mr. Shagrir has travelled the world in his job with Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but never returned to Paris because he felt it would be too traumatic. He finally decided to make the trip when Judge Trevidic asked to meet with victims or their families.
Two days after the meeting, he visited the synagogue with his father and older brother.
“I had a feeling of great apprehension as I was approaching the street. I could really feel my heart racing and a tightness in my throat,” he said.
“I stood exactly on the same spot I stood when I was 16 after the bomb went off. Then I got to where the bomb exploded. And then I got to the synagogue and saw the memorial plaque they have on the front, with the victims’ names, and I felt that coming was the right thing to do, almost as if a weight was taken off my shoulders.”
The Shagrir family are among several victims who have filed special papers that will allow them to be part of the court process if Mr. Diab is returned to France, and to sue for damages.
