OTTAWA–A publication ban was ordered yesterday at the beginning of an extradition hearing for an Ottawa university professor arrested in connection with a fatal bombing at a Paris synagogue in 1980.
The ban, along with a separate court order sealing evidence in the case against Hassan Diab, 55, means the public is unlikely to learn what led to Diab’s sudden arrest this week until after his extradition hearing ends.
But Diab’s lawyer, who concurred with the ban, took time before the hearing to reiterate claims his client is a victim of mistaken identity and was not even in France when the explosion killed three French men and an Israeli woman.
“It’s mistaken identity, that’s for sure,” said lawyer René Duval, who travelled to Ottawa from his office in Trois Rivières, Que., for the hearing. “He wasn’t in France for sure. He was probably, at the time this happened, still studying at the University of Lebanon.”
Ontario Superior Court Justice Michel Charbonneau adjourned the hearing until next week.
Diab is said to hold Lebanese and Canadian passports and to have lived in the U.S. for several years before moving to Canada. He teaches part-time at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University and was arrested at his home in Gatineau, Que., near Ottawa.
Diab was escorted into court by two uniformed RCMP tactical squad officers wearing bulletproof vests and shatter-proof eye wear.
The 1980 bombing took place at 24 Rue Copernic, the street address of the Paris Synagogue.
Hundreds of worshippers were to emerge from a Sabbath service minutes after the bomb went off. No one claimed responsibility, but the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations was later blamed.
A French magistrate reactivated an investigation into the cold case last year, when German authorities discovered an old membership list for the defunct terrorist group.
Duval represented Diab last year when his name first came up in the renewed investigation. Duval responded with emotion when asked if he knew why the investigation had been revived following a French newspaper leak last year.
“I’d like to know that,” Duval said. “I understand the case was closed like three times in France and all of a sudden out of the blue, this leak in (the French daily) Le Figaro last year.” Nothing more was heard of the case until the arrest on Thursday, he said.
The arrest warrant is based on charges of murder and attempted murder.
