Paris court gives man life term for 1980 bombing

PARIS: A Paris court on Friday sentenced Lebanese-Canadian citizen Hassan Diab to life in prison in absentia for the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in which four people died.

The court followed prosecutors´ request for the maximum possible punishment against Diab, now 69 and a university professor in Canada. Prosecutors had said in their summing-up that there was “no possible doubt” that Diab, the only suspect, was behind the attack.

In the early evening of October 3, 1980, explosives placed on a motorcycle detonated close to a synagogue in Rue Copernic in Paris´s chic 16th district, killing a student passing by on a motorbike, a driver, an Israeli journalist and a caretaker. Forty-six were injured in the blast. The bombing was the first deadly attack against a Jewish target on French soil since World War II.