A man sentenced to life imprisonment for involvement in the murder of four Jews in a French synagogue bombing is teaching a “social justice” course at a Canadian university.
Dr Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-Canadian citizen, was found guilty by a French court for taking part in the 1980 bombing outside the Rue Copernic Reform synagogue in Paris, which killed four people and injured 46.
He is employed at Carleton University, in Ottawa, Canada, as a teacher in sociology and is delivering a class this autumn titled “Social Justice in Action”.
The sociology course will cover “the dynamic relationship between institutionalised legal power (police, court, surveillance, prison, etc.) and miscarriages of justice in society”.
The 70-year-old was first arrested in 2008 by Canada’s RCMP and placed under strict bail conditions. He was extradited to France in 2014, but after three years in a maximum-security prison, his case was dropped.
The case was re-opened a few years later and in a French trial in 2023, Diab was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment.
He was found guilty of planting the bomb on the evening of October 3, 1980, outside the Rue Copernic synagogue where 320 worshippers had gathered for Shabbat services.
Despite the conviction, Diab is still employed at Carleton University, where staff have previously rallied against his extradition.
The sons of one of the victims of the bombing, Aliza Shragir, an Israeli TV presenter, said the decision to hire Diab as a lecturer was “outrageous”.
In a statement, her sons 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.”
French authorities allege that Diab was part of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which they say was behind the attack. The bombing marked the first deadly attack against Jews in France since the end of the Second World War.
Idit Shamir, the Israeli consul general in Toronto, called Carleton’s decision “unconscionable” in a post to her X/Twitter, while B’nai Brith Canada, the country’s oldest Jewish human rights organisation, said “Carleton’s silence is deeply disturbing”.
B’nai B’rith said on X/Twitter said, “Its decision to continue to employ Diab not only presents a danger to the well-being of its students, but it is an insult to the memory of the innocent victims of his heinous crime and an affront to all Canadians who value law and order.”
B’nai B’rith has issued a petition demanding Diab’s immediate dismissal.
Diab has consistently denied the allegations by maintaining that he was in Lebanon at the time of the attack to write university exams. Friends from Beirut have provided testimony supporting his claim.
In 2018, the terrorism charges against him were dropped due to a lack of evidence. But French anti-terrorism prosecutors launched an appeal in 2021, reopening the case.
In May 2021, France’s top court, the Court of Cassation, denied Diab’s lawyers appeal to try to stop the trial, and he was convicted a year later in absentia.
Diab refused to attend, calling his situation “Kafkaesque”. His lawyer said Diab’s arrest was “a mistaken identification”, and that he couldn’t have entered France at the time of the attack because he had lost his passport.
Amnesty International has previously campaigned for the charges against Diab to be withdrawn, saying he has been subjected to unfair trials and arbitrary arrest and that the evidence against him is “weak, unreliable and inconclusive”.
The JC has approached Diab and Carleton University for comment.