Canada’s Jewish community is up in arms after one of the country’s universities hired a convicted terrorist as a professor.
Hassan Diab, 70, a Lebanese-Canadian academic, was convicted by a French court in 2023 for the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that killed four.
He will lecture on “social justice in action” at Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
The course, ironically, will teach “the dynamic relationship between institutionalized legal power (police, court, surveillance, prison, etc.) and miscarriages of justice in society.”
Bnai Brith Canada issued a petition demanding Diab’s immediate dismissal.
“Hassan Diab, the PFLP terrorist convicted in France for his role in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that left four people dead and dozens wounded, is inexplicably currently employed as a lecturer @Carleton_U,” the organization posted to X.
Bnai Brith said the university had ignored its formal request to terminate his employment. The group warned that Diab’s continued employment by the university “not only presents a danger to the well-being of its students, but it is an insult to the memory of the innocent victims of his heinous crime and an affront to all Canadians who value law and order.”
Convicted Terrorist Teaching at Carleton University
— B'nai Brith Canada (@bnaibrithcanada) November 1, 2024
Hassan Diab, the PFLP terrorist convicted in France for his role in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue that left four people dead and dozens wounded, is inexplicably currently employed as a lecturer @Carleton_U.
Despite… pic.twitter.com/DeP7wpELsq
On Aug. 28, the Green Party of Canada issued a statement urging “the government to take decisive action to protect Dr. Diab and to provide a clear and just resolution to this case.”
On May 8, 2023, Carleton’s sociology department called on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-Justice Minister David Lametti to prevent Diab’s extradition.
On Oct. 3, 1980, a bomb went off on the street in front of the Rue Copernic synagogue, considered “the first fatal antisemitic attack in France since the Holocaust,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The bombing killed four and injured 46 as some 320 worshippers gathered inside for Friday night Sabbath services.
Four people were killed in the attack: Philippe Bouissou, 22, passing by on his motorcycle, Aliza Shagrir, 44, an Israeli TV presenter on vacation, Jean-Michel Barbé, a driver, and Hilario Lopes-Fernandez, a Portuguese housekeeper for the nearby Victor Hugo Hotel.
The bomb, roughly 22 pounds of explosives, was hidden in the saddlebags of a parked motorcycle. It was timed to go off at the end of services as people were leaving, but exploded prematurely as the service started several minutes late.
“French journalist Jean Chichizola described ‘cars thrown on the road like children’s toys,’ ‘flames licking the upper floors of adjacent buildings’ and ‘shop windows blown up all along the street,’” JTA reported.
No one took responsibility for the attack but French investigators traced it to the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). For months investigators were misled by a man affiliated with a neo-Nazi group who claimed responsibility. He eventually admitted he had no involvement.
In 2008, French authorities requested Diab’s arrest. He returned to Canada in 2018 but charges were dropped.
But in 2021, charges were reinstated and Diab was convicted in absentia in a Paris court in April 2023. The court sentenced him to life in prison and issued a warrant for his arrest.
