Hassan Diab, a sociology professor living in Ottawa, is finishing up his classes for the day when he learns that he is the primary suspect in France’s investigation into the Copernic synagogue bombing. At first, he doesn’t believe this. But he begins to sense that he’s being surveilled. Then early one morning, he hears an unexpected knock on his door.
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ALEX: Last time, on the Copernic Affair…
After the 1980 attack on the Copernic St. synagogue, victims lived with years of trauma, unable to find closure.
PASCAL: Le problème, c’est qu’on ne savait pas pourquoi. Donc quoi dire? Comment? Comment expliquer ce qui s’était passé alors que soi même on n’a pas les réponses?
ALEX: But 27 years after the bombing, A new judge took up the case: Marc Trévidic was determined to bring justice to the victims.
ORON: He presented the case in a very impressive way. Very convincing way. So, for us, the families, I guess it was – wow. Because as you said, we haven’t heard anything for so many years.
ALEX: Trevidic tracked down his main suspect: Hassan Diab. A sociology professor living in Ottawa, Canada.
ALEX: Was this the first time you heard the name Hassan Diab come up?
ORON: Yes, yes. We haven’t heard it before at all. This was astonishing for us, I mean, that something like this can happen at all. And in a way, we were also happy that they tracked down the guy who actually planted the bomb.
ALEX: After a year of investigation, Marc Trévidic felt he had gathered enough evidence to tip the case over the line and requested Hassan Diab’s extradition to France.
MUSIC
Chapter 1: Meeting Hassan
DANA: I’m Dana Ballout.
ALEX: I’m Alex Atack.
DANA: From Canadaland, this is the Copernic Affair.
DANA (VOICE NOTE): Hi, Alex, I’m on the plane from LA to Ottawa. I’m somewhere above Chicago right now…
DANA: On my way to visit Hassan Diab in Ottawa, I was nervous.
A lot was riding on this trip. Alex was back in the UK, but I kept him updated with WhatsApp voice notes.
DANA (VOICE NOTE): This case is such a mind fuck you’ll read one document and you’ll be like, hmm…
DANA: We’d been speaking with Hassan for months over Zoom at this point.
We’d interviewed lawyers, victims of the attack, magistrates.
We’d read hundreds of pages of court documents, testimonies and evidence.
And, we’d spoken to Hassan’s inner circle.
DANA (VOICE NOTE): I’m mostly nervous to meet Hassan tonight because I just don’t know what to expect.
DANA: When I travelled to meet him at his home, I was there to ask difficult questions, sure. But I was also there to get a sense of the man.
Who is Hassan Diab? What’s his version of this story?
DANA (VOICE NOTE): And also I’ve read up to, like, 500 pages at this point about him and what he might look like. And does he have short hair, long hair, light hair, big eyes, small eyes? Is he 1.70m? Is he 1.65m?
DANA (VOICE NOTE): Does he speak French? Does he not speak French? […] Anyway, we’ll see, how it goes. I’ll keep you posted. Okay. Bye.
DANA: I was kinda apprehensive.
I mean – the man Alex and I had spoken to over Zoom seemed… harmless.
But this constant thought lingered in the back of my mind:
This man is believed by French prosecutors to have murdered four innocent people. And he was still basically a stranger to me.
So I asked my husband, Jonathan, if he would come on the trip too. And help me film the interviews.
JONATHAN: How’s that angle? Is that okay? Yeah, yeah.
DANA: And in the dead of winter, we landed in freezing ass, sleepy Ottawa.
DANA: There’s been a snowstorm since we got here…
DANA: Snow, ice, wind… Coming from Los Angeles, this was not my comfort zone.
DANA: So we are almost at Hassan’s house…
DANA: As we pulled into Hassan’s driveway, his daughter was shoveling snow.
When she saw us pull up, she yelled to her mother in Arabic: “Ijit el mara” – “that lady is here.” She must have assumed I didn’t speak or understand Arabic. It made me smile.
When we went inside the house, I met Hassan’s kids and wife Rania.
Rania was, I think… a little wary of me. I tried putting her at ease by speaking to her in Arabic, establishing some common ground, breaking the ice, but she only responded to me in English.
She also didn’t want to speak to us for this podcast. She has done a lot of interviews, campaigns, and press conferences on Hassan behalf and told me it was too painful to keep doing them.
No to interviewing the kids either. Which – Fair enough.
Then – Hassan walked in.
DANA: Hi Hassan!
HASSAN: Good, how are you doing guys? Sorry I missed your calls, it looks like the telephone was upstairs…
MUSIC TONE CHANGE
DANA: He was energetic and welcoming, almost excited we were there…
Hassan looks… exactly how you might expect a sociology professor to look. Short, neat hair. Square, wire framed glasses.
He has this bouncy energy about him. Walks around with a spring in his step. Like he’s always in a rush to get somewhere.
HASSAN: My dream is to sleep in the forest. You know, to see no walls under the tree is good during the day. Under a tree is the best thing, especially when it’s hot. Oh, that’s a dream.
DANA: He made some jokes, offered us water, and tried to make us feel comfortable in his home.
HASSAN: We moved here just before Covid hit…
DANA: Then we followed him to a quiet room at the back of the house. It was small – the walls were covered in artwork by his two youngest children.
There was a bed in one corner. And a poster in another that read “Bring Hassan Home”.
And, notebooks everywhere. Stacks of them in the closet, stacks on the desk. A notebook in Hassan’s hand too – he seemed to carry one at all times.
And it’s here that we spent the next six hours talking.
MUSIC
Chapter 2: Hassan’s childhood
DANA: So can you introduce yourself?
HASSAN: Oh, Hassan Diab. I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Most of my life, I would say, in early childhood, I was in the sport activities in general. And mainly football. I liked to play football. I still remember even the names of the first League, League One in Lebanon. I can tell you the 12 teams that were involved. If you want me, I can tell you [naming teams]…
DANA: It didn’t take me long to realise: getting short answers from Hassan was going to be difficult. His stories ran in circles and often felt random.
HASSAN: …monkeys jumping around, you know, you can imagine…
DANA: And sometimes I’d lose track of whether he was on a tangent or if the story was the tangent.
HASSAN: What they used to call it in Arabic? I forgot the name…
DANA: I’d ask one question… and he would just go.
HASSAN: Then he moved to buy a taxi though he didn’t know how to drive.
DANA: But – he hadn’t set any ground rules for this interview. Nothing was off limits.
And one of the first things I noticed was that his memories were detailed. Meticulous.
HASSAN: The first time I learned how to swim, it wasn’t a lesson, somebody pushed me in the sea and nobody came in to save me…
DANA: Hassan Diab grew up in the 1950s in a Shia Muslim family in Lebanon.
His family didn’t have a lot of money. He grew up with six siblings – five boys and one girl.
HASSAN: My mother wanted a girl, so she kept trying until number seven came girl, and she said, mission accomplished.
DANA: Quite early in our conversation, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between Hassan and my father. Both born in 1953, both born into working class families in Lebanon, and both grew up with six siblings.
I found myself quietly comparing details of Hassan’s life against stories my father told me about his life in Lebanon. This became my own weird way of sense-checking Hassan’s stories.
He told me his father worked a few different jobs before opening a small textile shop in Beirut – the capital of Lebanon – where Hassan would spend most of his time.
Even as a child, he helped his father at the store.
HASSAN: The store was 50 yards or 100 yards from the house. He would come home and take a nap, eat. And Hassan is looking after the business, and I want to play football. What’s this? But, I don’t know, for some reason, he trusted my skills in the business.
DANA: Both of his parents were illiterate – so they relied on him to keep track of who bought what, how to spell customers’ names, and what was owed at the end of the month.
While his father wanted him to work at the shop, his mother encouraged him to study and to read.
HASSAN: She wanted everybody to read. And she kept saying, I don’t want you to be like me.
DANA: Do you remember what were some of your favourite books?
HASSAN: some literature. Mikhail Naimy and uh, Soheil Araj and uh, Elia Abu Madi and gosh, anything that wasn’t in the school curriculum. I read most of these things.
HASSAN: And other books. What’s her name? Agatha Christie, Agatha Christie. I read so many of her books.
DANA: So that was Hassan’s childhood – school, which he hated, helping to run his father’s’ business, which he also hated, swimming, football, walking in nature, and reading, which he loved.
It was a simple life… but not for long.
MUSIC
Chapter 3: Lebanese civil war begins
ALEX: One morning in the spring of 1975, Hassan was at a football match in Beirut, when news started to spread – of a gunfight between a Christian militia and a Palestinian guerrilla group.
The violence got worse later that day when a bus filled with Palestinians was attacked – and more than 20 people were killed.
HASSAN: And I see something in the streets. Unusual. And people saying, oh, avoid the street, avoid that one. What’s going on? There are shootings. That was Sunday, April 13th. And, you know, everything went crazy from that day on.
ALEX: This day – April 13th 1975 – is remembered as day one of the Lebanese civil war.
And this is really where Hassan’s life – and everyone’s life in Lebanon – took a turn. The country descended into chaos.
ARCHIVE: There was more sniper and machine gun fire in Beirut today, the premier of Lebanon tried to patch together another ceasefire…
ALEX: And in that chaos, militias found a haven in Lebanon. The country became a complex patchwork of areas controlled by various armed groups.
ARCHIVE: It’s a confusing combination of political organisations that makes up the leftists street fighters in this war…
HASSAN: It took maybe 2 or 3 months before it spread to other areas, to the city centre, downtown and other places. So then you start coping with what’s going on. You start seeing people coming from all organisations coming around, walking the streets.
ALEX The streets Hassan had grown up playing football on, the neighbourhoods he’d walked through to get to school – they became frontlines for vicious gun battles.
ARCHIVE: This was once the richest part of the richest city in the middle east. Now it’s the frontline of the war in Lebanon. Buildings where last year, the moneymakers of the western world exchanged their millions, are now the barricades of Beirut.
DANA: But despite the chaos and struggle everywhere, and the complete disruption of normal life, there was one thing the civil war in Lebanon could not extinguish: the flame of young love.
Chapter 4: Hassan meets Nawal
DANA: Okay so tell me how you met Hassan.
NAWAL: I remember meeting Hassan in 1979. I was a student at the American University of Beirut. I remember the first time I met him, it was a play on campus. And I for some reason remember that play. It was Waiting for Godot.
NAWAL: Yeah. And he was taking some photographs of the play and so on.
DANA: This is Nawal Copty. One weekend, I drove about six hours to meet her in northern California at her home.
She told me how – back in the late 1970s, she was studying computer science in Beirut – when she first met Hassan.
DANA: Did you find him cute?
NAWAL: Yeah, he was very very cute, I would say.
DANA: When you first started speaking, like, what did you think of his demeanour?
NAWAL: Oh, he was very friendly, he was the joking type, he liked to swim. He was athletic. Yeah, he was pretty nice and friendly.
DANA: Do you remember how he first asked you out?
NAWAL: I think… maybe we went for a swim together.
DANA: Nawal and Hassan’s romance was unlikely for the times. She was Christian and Palestinian. Her family had money. And Hassan was neither Christian, nor Palestinian, nor wealthy.
That pairing in Lebanon, even today, is rare.
DANA: When your family met him, was it ever an issue that he was, like, a different religion?
NAWAL: It was actually. When they found out that he’s a Muslim, I don’t think they were very pleased about that. I would say my mom was probably okay, but maybe my dad had some reservations, and my dad’s family had some reservations. They would have preferred a Christian.
DANA: And do you remember those conversations with your dad? Did he ever come around?
NAWAL: My dad? Yes. It took a while. … You know, at the time, people always worried what the neighbours might say. It’s not like, oh, we don’t like Muslims. Not at all. It was more like, oh, how would it work? There’s no civil marriage in Lebanon, even. And it’s very uncommon to have two people get married if they’re of two different religions.
DANA: Falling in love with someone from a different religion is still an issue for a lot of people in Lebanon.
But – during the Lebanese civil war, being of a certain religion or background in the wrong place at the wrong time could also get you killed.
Beirut was divided almost straight down the middle – with Christian militias on the east, and Muslim militias on the west.
Checkpoints were scattered across the city, each one seemingly controlled by a different militia.
NAWAL: I lost a cousin in the Civil War. He disappeared, basically. He and his friend were travelling between East and West Beirut.
DANA: Your ID – which stated your name, nationality and religion – would be inspected at every checkpoint.
NAWAL: And we don’t know till this day what happened to him, how come he never reached home.
DANA: Hassan being Muslim helped Nawal’s Christian family dodge certain restrictions the war had imposed and kept them safer.
NAWAL: My mom was very, very careful. She was very protective. So she tried to make sure that they wouldn’t go out on their own to certain areas. Hassan would be around to help us if we needed anything.
ALEX: The picture Nawal painted for us of Hassan Diab in the 1970s was of a fun loving, smart, peaceful young man who liked photography and swimming. Someone who wrote her love poems and who kept her safe. Someone she could see a future with.
But this description does not track with the story French investigators had put together about Hassan by 2007.
In their version, he was a militant university student. Someone who – in his 20s – took an interest in leftist politics – but ended up on a very dark, violent road.
A road that would lead him to join a Palestinian militia in Lebanon and be recruited into a group that would detonate a bomb outside the Copernic Street synagogue.
Central to the French case were five years in Hassan Diab’s life – between 1975 – the start of the civil war – and 1980 – the year of the Copernic attack.
So – Dana and I spent a lot of time talking to him about that period.
ALEX: You brought this up earlier, like that in Beirut, especially during the civil war, there were militias, political groups everywhere. And I wondered, how did your relationship to these groups work?
HASSAN: The university was a place where you see all these groups, from leftist to nationalist, to a few Islamists. And the university was the place where it reflected the power of all these people. And you have friends, because they are in your class, and you make fun of them. That was mostly my job, to the point where they said, Hassan, your mouth is really not helping you because sometimes you will get really in trouble.
So I was well known as a person who was anti all these groups. But I was more concerned about going every day to the sea. I would swim in winter and in summer, and I had my motorcycle, and I had my, you know, different kind of lifestyle. if you want to call it hippie life, call it hippie life.
ALEX: You were in this context at university, where there were lots of young people interested in being part of these political groups, maybe even fighting with them. And you were able to stay away from all of that. Is that what you’re saying?
HASSAN: Absolutely. Even some people would say, ‘we envy you, the way, you know, you can manage with all these different groups who fight for anything’.
ALEX: So just so I have it completely straight, you were never part of a group that could be considered a militia. You never fought with any of them. You never picked up arms?
HASSAN: It’s strange you ask this because most of these groups, everybody thought I was like… with another group. They just put the tag on you… Ah, he’s with the Iraqis, he’s with this…
DANA: But, Hassan, are you able to answer the question yes or no? So the question is did you ever belong to any political party? Is there a yes or no answer?
HASSAN: No. Of course.
DANA: And then also did you ever fight and pick up guns for any group?
HASSAN: For any group? No. For myself, maybe. I used to shoot at birds. But I missed most of the birds, luckily.
DANA: So you didn’t participate, you never fought in the Civil War for one political party over another?
HASSAN: I told you I would go with all these people out, and they would shoot. They will let me shoot maybe at the glasses or whatever, and, maybe if they consider me a fighter at the time, I would be with all the groups at the same time.
DANA: So the most correct answer is you had friends from all groups, but you’re saying that you didn’t belong to any one group in particular?
HASSAN: Correct. Yeah.
DANA: All right. Because sometimes, Hassan, it’s hard to get you to answer yes or no.
HASSAN: Oh, well, you have to explain because this situation in Beirut, it’s really not yes or no.
MUSIC
ALEX: While our conversations with Hassan circled a lot around the civil war, it was really just a few months that are at the heart of this story: the summer and autumn of 1980.
From August to October – when the bombing in Paris took place.
DANA: According to the French narrative, in this window of time, Hassan took a trip to Greece then came back to Beirut, then travelled to Europe, and committed the attack on Copernic Street.
As we said in the last episode, key to their claim here is Hassan Diab’s passport. Which was found in the possession of somebody from the PFLP-OS – the militant group they believed carried out the bombing.
And the passport had entry and exit stamps that lined up with the date of the attack.
ALEX: I want to ask about the passport. When I was in France, speaking to people there, including magistrates, this is the strongest piece of evidence, for them. This is the thing they bring up and point to the most. Tell us what the story with the passport is from your perspective.
HASSAN: You know, I suppose that I lost it after I came back from Greece.
DANA: This was the summer of 1980 – a few months before the attack in Paris.
ALEX: So you were in Greece on vacation?
HASSAN: On vacation.
ALEX: With Nawal?
HASSAN: Nawal and her family. Because her father had a house in Athens. He used to work for an American company. So he had a big house in Athens. So they would go and visit him every summer, and I would go with them.
Then I came back. Apparently, here, I lost the bag. Nawal bought it for me, a leather bag. And I put my stuff in it. I forgot that the passport was in it. There were other documents there; school papers and stuff like that, university things. It was a nice leather bag, you know, the first leather bag in my life.
ALEX: Back home in Lebanon, Hassan said that one day he strapped his bag to the back of his motorcycle and started driving between his house and university.
HASSAN: Apparently it fell, I didn’t feel it. Then I arrived. Where’s the bag? I didn’t find the bag. Go back. Didn’t find the bag. Somebody, of course, took it because it’s a crowded area, right? It’s not a big deal. And that was that. And I didn’t think of it until way later on.
ALEX: He says he didn’t think about it – or even notice his passport was missing – until a few years later.
HASSAN: You know, it was during this crazy war in Beirut like you moved from one place to another. And you don’t think a lot of so many things. Okay, what is the passport? You don’t find it, in Lebanon, at that time, it wasn’t a big deal. We were, you know, not well organised.
ALEX: When he did notice it was missing – he says he didn’t report it straight away.
HASSAN: That’s a stupid thing to say, you know, you don’t report anything in the civil war. They would laugh at you if you go to the police station to report something, the police would laugh at you if you come and say ah, they say, you see, the people are getting killed in the streets and you want me to look for your passport? It would look like super ridiculous.
MUSIC
DANA: One question at the core of this investigation is: … where was Hassan Diab on October 3rd, 1980 – the night of the attack? According to him, he was in Beirut studying for his exams.
And years later, students who studied for the same exams came forward and said they remembered him in Beirut at that time – and that they didn’t remember him being involved in any political groups on campus.
Also, old university records confirmed that the exams took place in September and October 1980 – and that he passed those exams.
And Nawal Copty remembers him being in Beirut at the time.
NAWAL: So I got an acceptance to pursue a master’s in computer science at the University of Aston in Birmingham. And the year started in September, October 1980. So I was going to go and study there, and my dad accompanied me there because he wanted to make sure I get settled and make sure everything is working for me there. And we went together to the airport to take a plane to London, and Hassan was driving the car at the time.
ALEX: Nawal Copty flew to the UK on September 28th. There is evidence she took this trip – stamps in her passport confirm it.
But according to the French authorities, the bomber had already entered Europe on September 20th. So if Hassan Diab had driven Nawal Copty to the airport on the 28th, their version of events was impossible.
This is Hassan Diab’s defence, supported by his girlfriend at the time, old University records and fellow students.
MUSIC
DANA: After Hassan graduated from the Lebanese University with a masters in sociology, he worked as a math teacher, then as a statistician at the Central Bank of Lebanon.
As the civil war raged on throughout the 1980s, tens of thousands of people left the country.
And in the summer of 1987 – so did Nawal and Hassan.
NAWAL: We both wanted to study in the United States. He wanted to continue his studies in sociology. And I wanted to continue my studies in computer science, and at the time, my parents were like, oh, you’re going to go together and study at Syracuse University? How are you going to be there living together? So for that reason, we decided to get married and then go together to the United States.
MUSIC
Chapter 5: Hassan and Nawal land in NY
DANA: Hassan Diab and Nawal Copty got married in Cyprus before landing in Syracuse, New York in 1987. They began settling into their new lives – starting new classes, finding their feet in a new country – and making new friends.
DANA: Had you ever met a person from Lebanon before?
DON PRATT: That was my first.
DANA: Don Pratt was one of Hassan Diab’s first friends at Syracuse University. They were enrolled in the same sociology program.
DON PRATT: We’d hang out, drink, talk about things happening in the world. Talk about our studies. And he was a very warm and gregarious person. So everybody, including me, naturally gravitated to him. Yeah, a fun guy. The students in the department would have parties. There was one lady in particular who had a nice house, and she would invite people over. And at some point, people would start dancing, and, oh, boy, did he want to dance. He got the attention of a number of the ladies.
DANA: But while he was making the most of his social life at university, Hassan Diab’s private life wasn’t going so well.
By the early 1990s, his relationship with Nawal – which had thrived in the intensity of wartime Beirut – was struggling in this new environment.
They started to drift apart, and before long, divorced.
And as for Don…
DANA: Well, obviously, you and Nawal developed a relationship after their divorce. Did you ever talk to Hassan like, hey, I’m attracted to your ex-wife. Is it okay with you if I pursue her?
DON PRATT: I don’t know if we ever really talked. I think there was, obviously, some growing awkwardness. We actually, I think, drifted apart as friends. I think that was just too awkward for everybody.
DANA: After university, Hassan and Nawal went their separate ways while Nawal and Don grew closer.
But Nawal would check in on Hassan from time to time.
DON PRATT: She was still in touch and she was totally transparent about that. I kind of knew what was going on with his life, you know, his various academic appointments and things like that. I would say, I never stopped liking him. I felt, this is really awkward and gosh, I’m kind of an interloper and stuff. But I never stopped liking him, because he was always a great guy.
ALEX: Nawal and Don continued their relationship after university. Eventually, they both got jobs in California and married after moving there together.
Hassan Diab moved on with his life, too.
He had other relationships and two children.
For what it’s worth – when questioned by police – one of his ex-partners was adamant that the person she knew would never have been involved in an attack like the Copernic bombing.
After Hassan finished his PhD, he taught at universities in Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates before settling back in New York.
HASSAN: Then 9/11 happened. Whoa. A few months after I arrived. The atmosphere, it was… Middle East phobia
ALEX: As islamophobia intensified in America – Hassan Diab considered moving out of the country.
He applied for various teaching jobs, and eventually ended up in Canada.
He met and married his current wife Rania.
By 2007, Hassan Diab had fallen into the quiet life of a university professor, living in Ottawa… And was blissfully unaware that halfway across the world, a French investigative judge was building a case against him, hoping to bring him to Paris to stand trial for murder.
Chapter 6: Chichizola
DANA: While I was in Canada, Hassan took me to the university of Ottawa where he used to teach.
I asked about his life as a professor and tried to keep up as he sped through the corridors.
DANA: If I came to you and I said, my dog ate my homework, what would you do?
HASSAN: I would say, could you bring me your dog because I have so many papers to, get rid of..
DANA: We found the room we were looking for.
The classroom was locked, so we stood outside and peered in through a small window.
DANA: How does it feel, Hassan, to look?
HASSAN: Well, you know, that’s the first time I have come back after this thing. 16 years ago, exactly. Wow, it’s scary.
DANA: This is this exact spot where his life changed forever – nearly two decades ago, as he finished up a lecture on social psychology.
HASSAN: I maybe had 125 registered students in that class, which was a big auditorium.
DANA: For the most part, he knew everyone in the room.
But there was one man, sitting in the back row, by the window, who Hassan hadn’t seen before.
HASSAN: He looks different. But sometimes people would come to my class, you know, with their friends. I didn’t care much. So I thought maybe he was one of these people coming with someone else.
DANA: He didn’t think much of it. Until the end of the class.
Everybody started packing up their things, and a few students stayed behind to ask questions.
And this man, he waited too.
HASSAN: I had maybe five students waiting to finish with. They had some questions. And he asked something above everybody else. I said, could you wait please? Until I finish with the students. He said, I have something to ask you.
MUSIC
ALEX: The man was a journalist called Jean Chichizola.
He worked at Le Figaro newspaper in France. And he’d flown all the way from Paris to Ottawa to speak to Hassan Diab.
Once the students were out of the room, Jean Chichizola broke the news.
French authorities thought Hassan was the person behind the attack on the Copernic synagogue in 1980.
Later, Chichizola would say that Hassan didn’t seem surprised by these allegations. But Hassan remembers it differently.
HASSAN: It was one of the biggest shocks in my life. Like what?
DANA: Hassan said he thought the whole thing was a joke.
HASSAN: And then, here I started thinking — ah, that’s part of a candid camera.
DANA: The reporter asked where he was in 1980 – and about the PFLP-OS.
Hassan became frustrated with his questions – and began walking back from the lecture hall to his office. Jean Chichizola walked with him.
We reached out to Jean Chichizola many times for this podcast. He repeatedly declined our request for an interview.
HASSAN: I told him, that’s enough, you know. I’ve heard enough from you. Thank you very much. If there is anything, I’m available. I will be facing any charges or any allegations or anything because I have nothing to hide.
ALEX: Hassan took Jean Chichizola’s business card, then got on his bike and cycled home.
He says he was sure there was a simple explanation here. A case of mistaken identity.
His name – Hassan Diab – is kinda like… John Smith in Lebanon. It’s super common.
Even one of Lebanon’s former prime ministers is called Hassan Diab.
DANA: So as he made his way home that day in 2007, he says he thought – this is just some kind of mix-up. It’ll blow over. He put the French reporter out of his mind.
HASSAN: Riding back from Ottawa U in downtown on the canal. And, thinking of this over and over and over. What’s going on here? Is this fake? Is this a story? It’s, you know… I tried to play all the scenarios, but I said, who cares? You know, let him go anywhere he wants to go. And I forgot about him.
MUSIC
DANA: Jean Chicizola had not confused Hassan Diab with someone else.
After that encounter, he started to feel he was being watched.
HASSAN: We started seeing something very unusual. People trying to break into our condo in the previous place. We caught the person by chance. What are you doing? Oh, sorry. I made a mistake. You know, I was going to another floor. I said, which one? He didn’t have an idea. I said, there’s something fishy going on here.
DANA: He called the police, and filed several complaints, but no one responded.
He and Rania tried to carry on as normal. They thought maybe they were just being paranoid.
Until November 13th, 2008.
MUSIC
Chapter 7: The Arrest
HASSAN: I was ready to go for my morning jog, and before I put my shoes on, I hear a big knocking on the door. And, I opened the door and I see all this SWAT team… I thought again, there’s a movie here. Maybe they are shooting a movie, and I kept looking at them and shocked, like, what’s going on? It was a big, big shock. Like when I realised these were, no, really, police.and with guns, and I said, goodness me. I have my t-shirt, my… nothing. I had nothing else.
I said, what is going on now? There is something big.
ALEX: Hassan Diab was taken to the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre (OCDC).
At first, he was put in solitary confinement.
Then – after a month – he was moved into the general population.
The same day Hassan Diab was whisked away from his home, Nawal Copty and Don Pratt’s lives were pulled back into his orbit.
NAWAL: An FBI agent knocked at my door here in California and handed me a letter. And he’s saying, we want you to come and answer questions.
MUSIC
DANA: Marc Trévedic, the investigating judge, had flown from France to California – he wanted to interview Nawal Copty in person.
But her lawyer had reservations.
NAWAL: He was extremely concerned. He said, these are awful charges, and you better protect yourself. When I did go to answer questions, he said, just plead the fifth. Don’t answer anything.
DANA: Why do you think he gave you that advice?
NAWAL: Because he knew the charges were extremely serious. He had no knowledge of the case, or even if I had any role in the case. He wanted to protect me as his client, and he said, let’s just refuse to answer any questions.
Looking back, I think that was a mistake because the person interviewing me at the time was Marc Trévidic. And I think by not answering questions, he got really upset. And maybe he thought that I had something to hide.
DANA: Nawal Copty’s decision to remain silent during this interview actually might have done more harm than good to Hassan Diab’s case.
NAWAL: So I think it was not a good idea at all not to answer questions.
DANA: Given she was Hassan’s girlfriend during that summer of 1980, Nawal was an obvious person to attest to his innocence… and she wasn’t talking.
TREVIDIC: I was disappointed because she was a witness. I had no intention to prosecute her. She was really a mere witness. And all the questions were about Hassan Diab. So I was very, very surprised to hear that she invoked the Fifth Amendment. It was very strange.
DANA: …, did it make you more suspicious?
TREVIDIC: Of course, Because really I tried to explain, I said, if you have something to say for Hassan Diab, it’s a moment, it’s official. So, of course, it made me more suspicious.
MUSIC
Chapter 8: End thoughts
DANA (VOICE NOTE): Okay. So we just finished six hours interviewing Hassan… Yeah, more than six hours of interviews. Just in one place. In one room. Two little bathroom breaks. And that was it. No one ate. No one drank. It was crazy. We had some water, actually. Yeah, it was intense.
DANA: After my trip to Ottawa, I still didn’t know what to think.
I found Hassan Diab’s account of his life compelling.
But it was also so complex.
DANA (VOICE NOTE): But, you know, he talks in long stories. Everything is a story…
DANA: And – I wasn’t exactly coming back with the straightforward answers I’d gone looking for.
DANA (VOICE NOTE): Yeah, that’s where we’re at. But… yeah, I don’t know. It was a lot.
ALEX: Hassan Diab’s version of the story was dense. He rarely gave us yes or no answers.
This could just be – as he said – because nothing is yes or no when it comes to growing up in wartime Beirut.
And I feel like anyone who’d been subject to decades-long investigations, imprisonment, surveillance… their answers also might be dense, maybe a little scattershot.
But – people we spoke to in France would point to this – to Hassan’s demeanour – and say: look – this guy isn’t trustworthy.
DANA: Hassan Diab sat in prison in Ottawa while Marc Trévidic continued with his investigation in Paris.
The French were closer than they’d ever been to convicting someone for the Copernic synagogue attack.
But first, a Canadian judge would need to sign off on the extradition request.
MUSIC
DANA: Coming up on the Copernic Affair…
ARCHIVE (NEWSREEL): as the Ontario superior court inches closer towards a final decision in the extradition case of Hassan Diab, public pressure intensifies…
BERNIE: To have a terrorist in our midst in quiet old Ottawa… I was actually disgusted.
RAGING GRANNIES [SINGING]: There’s a Canadian, named Hassan Diab, in a nightmare he is caught…
DANA: Never occurred to you that he might not be innocent? Never?
JO: It’s impossible.
NOUR: I felt sure deep inside I trusted my gut feelings that this is an innocent man. And we need to support him.
DANA: You’re getting a bit emotional…
LINDA: I am, I am, yeah. No, it was hard to watch. It was definitely hard to watch.
BERNIE: I thought, okay, now the judge is going to make things right, because that’s what judges are supposed to do.
Credits
ALEX: The Copernic Affair is a production of Canadaland in partnership with House of Many Windows.
The series is written and produced by me, Alex Atack, and Dana Ballout.
Our editor is Julie Shapiro.
Additional production by Noor Azrieh.
Additional research, production and translation support by Catherine Bennett.
Sound design and mixing by Resonant Fields Audio.
Original Music by The Tie-Breakers.
Our Artwork is by Tony Wang
Our Executive Producers are Jesse Brown and Julie Shapiro.
And Jesse Brown is Canadaland’s Publisher And Editor.
Special thanks this episode to Jonathan Najarian and to George Azar.
