OTTAWA (AFP) — A Canadian-Lebanese national has been arrested in a suburb of Canada's capital for his alleged role in a 1980 bombing outside of a Paris synagogue that killed four, Canadian officials said Thursday.
"I can confirm that we've arrested Hassan Diab," justice department spokesman Christian Girouard told AFP.
Earlier, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said a suspect in the bombing was detained in Gatineau, Quebec, at the request of French authorities who had been searching for Diab for years.
"The individual was wanted in France in connection with the bombing at a Paris synagogue," Corporal Jean Hainey told AFP. "The RCMP was providing assistance as required under the mutual assistance treaty."
A judicial source in Paris had earlier announced the arrest in Canada of a suspect in the case. The French-language weekly news magazine L'Express also announced it on its website.
In October 1980, a bomb planted in a motorcycle saddlebag outside the Copernic Street synagogue in the tony 16th arrondissement killed three Frenchmen and a young Israeli woman.
It was the first fatal attack against the French Jewish community since the Nazi occupation of World War II.
French authorities issued a warrant in November 2007 for Diab's arrest, following a lead from German intelligence. But Diab claimed at the time he was a victim of mistaken identity and denied any links to extremist organizations.
On Thursday, his attorney Rene Duval told AFP his client was "innocent."
"My client is innocent and has nothing to do with this," he said, adding that he would ask for Diab's release at a court hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon in Ottawa.
Duval commented that, over the past 28 years, the case remained unsolved despite "several inquests by numerous magistrates" and it was eventually dropped.
"Then all of a sudden, (French President Nicolas) Sarkozy is elected and there's a leak in the French press and the case takes a new turn in Canada," he said.
Previously, Duval had threatened to sue French authorities for harassing his client, who teaches at the University of Ottawa, and for disrupting his life with wild accusations.
Diab, he insisted, had been studying in Beirut at the time of the Copernic Street bombing, and that he later moved to the United States to pursue a doctorate.
"My client has been systematically harassed. We can't say for sure by whom. He has been followed, and someone even went so far as to try to break into his home," Duval said on Thursday.
"These are methods used by shady characters."
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