Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk brought renewed attention to the case of Hassan Diab when he wrote on X that the “mass murderer” is “living free as a professor in Canada.” Some 21 million accounts viewed the Jan. 2 post.
A JNS review of the website of Carleton University, a public school in Ottawa, found that Diab, 71, taught the course Soci 3170A “Social Justice in Action” in the fall of 2024.
Among the things that the course addressed, according to a syllabus, were “miscarriages of justice” and “critically” examining “Canada’s Extradition Law and its shortcomings.” One of the course readings was to “visit justiceforhassandiab.org and familiarize yourself with the case study for this course.”
“This is a unique class as its instructor was a former ‘forced participant observer’ in detention centers in Canada and France,” it adds. “Students are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity by participating in class debates and discussions to acquire firsthand knowledge of the behind-the-bars world as experienced for years by a sociologist.”
It wasn’t clear if Diab is teaching a course in the coming academic year. The university’s sociology and anthropology department lists him as a “contract instructor” in the fall but not this winter.
A French court convicted Diab, then 69, in absentia and sentenced him to life in 2023 for the Oct. 3, 1980 synagogue bombing in Paris that killed four and wounded dozens on Simchat Torah. “The Rue Copernic attack was the first to target Jews in France since World War II and became a template for many other similar attacks linked to militants in the Middle East in the years that followed,” per the BBC.
Mike Fegelman, editor-in-chief of Honest Reporting Canada and a Carleton alumnus, told JNS that “it is beyond scandalous that a convicted terrorist would be allowed to reside in Canada, let alone be in a position of authority, teaching at Carleton University, my alma mater.”
“The news media must speak loudly and clearly and demand that Diab is not only fired from Carleton but is promptly deported from Canada,” he said.
Iddo Moed, the Israeli ambassador to Canada, wrote in the National Post in November that though the news that Diab was teaching social justice at a college “would be difficult to accept at any time, it is especially unsettling in the wake of the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023—the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust that also took place on the festival of Simchat Torah.”
“Employing a convicted terrorist anywhere, especially at a university in Canada’s national capital, is emblematic of a broader trend that has become notable since Oct. 7,” he added. “While threats to other racial, cultural or religious demographics are quickly rejected and condemned, Canadian Jews of all ages are increasingly reporting that violence and intimidation directed towards them is overlooked or even rationalized by some as being justified.”
The university’s sociology and anthropology department hosted a rally to support him on Nov. 13, 2022, “demanding that the Canadian government protect professor Hassan Diab from further injustice, stop the baseless prosecution he is facing and refuse any future request for Hassan’s extradition.” (JNS sought comment from Carleton.)
Diab was first charged in 1999—20 years after the bombing—but wasn’t extradited from Canada until eight years later.
After serving a three-year prison term in France, which Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said “should never have happened,” Diab was released due to lack of evidence.