A Paris court on Friday found Lebanese-Canadian academic Hassan Diab guilty in absentia of terrorism and sentenced him to life in prison for a 1980 bombing outside a Paris synagogue that killed four and wounded 46.

The court followed prosecutors' request for the maximum possible punishment against Diab, now 69 and a university professor in Ottawa, Canada. The court issued an arrest warrant for the academic, who denies wrongdoing.

Prosecutors had said in their summing-up that there was "no possible doubt" that Diab, the only suspect, was behind the attack. For victims, the ruling means justice at last, more than four decades after the bombing that was described as the first antisemitic terrorist attack in France since World War II.

Controversial verdict

The head of France's leading Jewish group, the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France CRIF welcomed the conviction and urged Canada to arrest Diab. The victims' attorneys say the long-awaited trial will serve as a deterrent for future terrorist acts and antisemitic sentiments.

For Diab and his supporters, the decision of the court is a shock and a judicial error. His lawyers say he was in Lebanon studying for university exams at the time of the attack and is a victim of mistaken identity, a scapegoat for a justice system determined to find a culprit.

Human rights group Amnesty International was among those who called for the court to drop what they call a flawed and baseless case, arguing that it "undermines effective justice for victims."

What happened in 1980?

French authorities accuse Diab of planting the bomb on a motorbike outside the synagogue on Rue Copernic in Paris, where 320 worshippers had gathered to mark the end of a Jewish holiday on the evening of October 3, 1980. Several were children celebrating their bar mitzvah.

The bomb killed a student passing by on a motorbike, a driver, an Israeli journalist, and a caretaker. Forty-six people were injured in the blast.

No organization ever claimed responsibility, but police suspected a splinter group of the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PLFP's political and military wings are deemed foreign terrorist organizations by the US and EU.  

Why was Diab accused?

French intelligence in 1999 accused Diab, a sociology professor, of having made the 10-kilogram (22-pound) bomb. They pointed to Diab's likeness with police sketches drawn at the time and handwriting analyses that they said confirmed him as a suspect.

They also produced a key item of evidence against him: a passport in his name, seized in Rome in 1981, with entry and exit stamps from Spain, where the attack plan was believed to have originated.

In 2014, Canada extradited Diab at the request of the French authorities. However, investigating judges were unable to prove his guilt conclusively during the investigation and Diab was released, leaving France for Canada a free man in 2018.

Three years later, a French court overturned the earlier decision and ordered that Diab should stand trial after all on charges of murder, attempted murder and destruction of property in connection with a terrorist enterprise.

Canada considers its reaction

After the Paris court convicted Diab, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada was considering its next steps.

"We will look carefully at next steps, at what the French government chooses to do, at what French tribunals choose to do," Trudeau told a news conference. But, he added, "We will always be there to stand up for Canadians and their rights."

Diab, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, reacted to the verdict by calling it "Kafkaesque" and "not fair."

"We'd hoped reason would prevail," he added. He and his supporters want Ottawa to reject any new requests for his extradition.

dh/wd (AFP, AP, dpa)