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Canadian court backs extradition of Paris synagogue bombing suspect

A Canadian court has upheld a decision to extradite a professor of Lebanese origin accused of bombing a Paris synagogue in 1980 to France. Hassan Diab, a 60-year-old sociology professor, says he will appeal to the Supreme Court.

The identikit picture of the bombing suspect
The identikit picture of the bombing suspect
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Diab was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 2008 in response to a request from France and the Canadian government authorised his extradition in 2012, following a judge’s decision to authorise it despite acknowledging the case against him was weak.

He appealed against the decision but on Thursday three judges rejected his appeal, stressing that he was not a Canadian citizen at the time of the crime and that Canada was “obliged to extradite him”.

The bombing of the synagogue in Paris’s rue Copernic killed four people and injured 40 and no viable claim of responsibility has been made.

French police say that it was the work of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and that Diab made and planted the bomb.

He was identified on the basis of an identikit picture created thanks to the testimony of a prostitute he is alleged to have visited after the attack

A French graphology test found that his handwriting was the same as that on a hotel register in the name of Alexander Panadriyou, a false identity used by a man travelling on a Cypriot passport.

Diab’s lawyer, Don Bayne, claims that the handwriting evidence is “ludicrous” and “manifestly unreliable” and challenges other evidence produced by the French.

Diab, who denies the allegations, expressed “great shock” at the latest decision.

"I neither participated in, nor had any knowledge of this heinous crime," Diab wrote in a statement Thursday. "I have always opposed anti-Semitism, discrimination and violence. I am innocent of the accusations against me."

The French Association of Victims of Terrorism welcomed the decision as a “significant step forward” in the case.
 

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