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Paris court gives 1980 synagogue bomber life sentence
PARIS (JTA) — Over 42 years after a bomb killed four and injured dozens outside the Rue Copernic synagogue, a court here has convicted a Lebanese-Canadian academic of the crime and given him a life sentence.
Hassan Diab, now a Canadian citizen, was convicted in absentia on Friday after more than a decade of start and stop legal proceedings. An arrest warrant has been issued but there were no immediate signs that Canada would agree to an extradition.
The bombing, which took place on Oct. 3, 1980, was understood to be the first fatal antisemitic attack in France since the Holocaust. Hundreds of thousands joined historically large protests in its wake.
After authorities initially thought the bombing was carried out by neo-Nazis, they issued an arrest warrant for Diab — believed to be a former member of a dissident group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations — in 2008. He was extradited from Canada in 2014, indicted in Paris and imprisoned.
But in a surprise to many, his case was dismissed in 2018, allowing him to return to Canada. Prosecutors appealed, leading to another surprising turn of events in 2021 as the court upheld the earlier decision, directing Diab to stand trial.
Over the course of five hours on Friday, prosecutor Benjamin Chambre said: “It is the honor of the French judicial and police institutions to have persevered… It is a strong signal: France does not abdicate in the face of terrorism.”
His hours of requisitions were followed by as many hours of defense pleadings. “I am here before you to avoid a miscarriage of justice,” said Diab’s attorney William Bourdon. He argued there was “no material element” and “no proof” of the Diab’s presence in France at the time of the attack.
“Even 43 years later, this trial had to take place,” said Bernard Cahen, one of multiple lawyers advocating for the victims’ families, said during the trial.
The new trial took place after a decade of other antisemitic attacks on communal targets and individuals, which in total caused many French Jews to feel afraid, both about their personal vulnerability and about the state’s commitment to their safety. French-Jewish immigration to Israel increased significantly after the attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris in 2015.
Jean-François Bensahel, president of the Copernic synagogue, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last month that the 1980 bombing was “engraved in our community’s history.”
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The post Paris court gives 1980 synagogue bomber life sentence appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel’s Netanyahu Hopes to ‘Taper’ Israel Off US Military Aid in Next Decade
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the press on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that he hopes to “taper off” Israeli dependence on US military aid in the next decade.
Netanyahu has said Israel should not be reliant on foreign military aid but has stopped short of declaring a firm timeline for when Israel would be fully independent from Washington.
“I want to taper off the military within the next 10 years,” Netanyahu told The Economist. Asked if that meant a tapering “down to zero,” he said: “Yes.”
Netanyahu said he told President Donald Trump during a recent visit that Israel “very deeply” appreciates “the military aid that America has given us over the years, but here too we’ve come of age and we’ve developed incredible capacities.”
In December, Netanyahu said Israel would spend 350 billion shekels ($110 billion) on developing an independent arms industry to reduce dependency on other countries.
In 2016, the US and Israeli governments signed a memorandum of understanding for the 10 years through September 2028 that provides $38 billion in military aid, $33 billion in grants to buy military equipment and $5 billion for missile defense systems.
Israeli defense exports rose 13 percent last year, with major contracts signed for Israeli defense technology including its advanced multi-layered aerial defense systems.
US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch Israel supporter and close ally of Trump, said on X that “we need not wait ten years” to begin scaling back military aid to Israel.
“The billions in taxpayer dollars that would be saved by expediting the termination of military aid to Israel will and should be plowed back into the US military,” Graham said. “I will be presenting a proposal to Israel and the Trump administration to dramatically expedite the timetable.”
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In Rare Messages from Iran, Protesters ask West for Help, Speak of ‘Very High’ Death Toll
Protests in Tehran. Photo: Iran Photo from social media used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law, via i24 News
i24 News – Speaking to Western media from beyond the nationwide internet blackout imposed by the Islamic regime, Iranian protesters said they needed support amid a brutal crackdown.
“We’re standing up for a revolution, but we need help. Snipers have been stationed behind the Tajrish Arg area [a neighborhood in Tehran],” said a protester in Tehran speaking to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity. He added that “We saw hundreds of bodies.”
Another activist in Tehran spoke of witnessing security forces firing live ammunition at protesters resulting in a “very high” number killed.
On Friday, TIME magazine cited a Tehran doctor speaking on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital recorded at least 217 killed protesters, “most by live ammunition.”
Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Setare Ghorbani, a French-Iranian national living in the suburbs of Paris, said that she became ill from worry for her friends inside Iran. She read out one of her friends’ last messages before losing contact: “I saw two government agents and they grabbed people, they fought so much, and I don’t know if they died or not.”
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Report: US Increasingly Regards Iran Protests as Having Potential to Overthrow Regime
United States President Donald J Trump in White House in Washington, DC, USA, on Thursday, December 18, 2025. Photo: Aaron Schwartz via Reuters Connect.
i24 News – The assessment in Washington of the strength and scope of the Iran protests has shifted after Thursday’s turnout, with US officials now inclined to grant the possibility that this could be a game changer, Axios reported on Friday.
“The protests are serious, and we will continue to monitor them,” an unnamed senior US official was quoted as saying in the report.
Iran was largely cut off from the outside world on Friday after the Islamic regime blacked out the internet to curb growing unrest, as videos circulating on social media showed buildings ablaze in anti-government protests raging across the country.
US President Donald Trump warned the Ayatollahs of a strong response if security forces escalate violence against protesters.
“We’re watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they’re going to get hit very hard by the United States,” Trump told reporters when asked about the unrest in Iran.
The latest reported death toll is at 51 protesters, including nine children.