(OTTAWA, ON) — Lebanese-Canadian university professor Hassan Diab was charged with first-degree murder and other offenses in France on Saturday after being extradited in connection with a decades-old terrorism case, and his lawyer says he is ready to prove in court there is no real evidence against him.
On Thursday, Canada’s highest court refused to hear Diab’s final plea to halt his extradition to France, ensuring he will face trial for the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue.
The decision brings an end to 60-year-old Diab’s six-year legal battle to avoid what he said would be an unfair prosecution in France for a crime he insists he did not commit.
The Supreme Court of Canada issued its decision in a statement, saying his appeal of a lower court ruling and the government’s extradition order was “dismissed without costs.”
Diab, who was taken into custody Wednesday pending the announcement, could now be flown to Paris at any time in the next 45 days. There he will be questioned by an investigating judge before criminal proceedings can begin.
If convicted, Diab could face life in prison.
The 1980 bombing on the Copernic Street was the first fatal attack against the French Jewish community since the Nazi occupation in World War II.
Explosives packed in the saddlebags of a parked motorcycle were detonated as worshippers were starting to exit the synagogue.
The blast killed three Frenchmen and a young Israeli woman. Forty were injured.
Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, speaking for the victims’ families, expressed “relief” that the case may now finally go to trial after 34 years.
Diab is a former sociology lecturer at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
He was born in Lebanon and studied sociology at the American University of Beirut. He received his PhD from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York and became a Canadian citizen in 1993. Sources say Diab moved to Ottawa in 2006.