(Jewish Group) Paris court gives 1980 synagogue bomber life sentence [View all]

Over 42 years after a bomb killed four and injured dozens outside the Rue Copernic synagogue, a court here has convicted a Lebanese-Canadian academic of the crime and given him a life sentence.

Hassan Diab, now a Canadian citizen, was convicted in absentia on Friday after more than a decade of start and stop legal proceedings. An arrest warrant has been issued but there were no immediate signs that Canada would agree to an extradition.

The bombing, which took place on Oct. 3, 1980, was understood to be the first fatal antisemitic attack in France since the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands joined historically large protests in its wake.

After authorities initially thought the bombing was carried out by neo-Nazis, they issued an arrest warrant for Diab — believed to be a former member of a dissident group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations — in 2008. He was extradited from Canada in 2014, indicted in Paris and imprisoned.

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