Hassan Diab faces a new reality in Europe’s largest maximum security prison. But when Marc Trévidic is replaced by new investigative judges, the case is thrown into uncertainty – and Hassan’s fortunes begin to shift.
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ALEX: Last time, on the Copernic Affair…
BERNIE: We said, thank God, that’s what we said, that they caught this person.
ALEX: After Hassan Diab’s arrest, extradition hearings began in Canada – to decide if he should be sent to France to stand trial.
His legal team fought for years to stop that from happening.
DON BAYNE: It was only when we got into the details of the case we saw that none of this was reliable evidence.
ALEX: As all the evidence was laid out in front of the courtroom – more people started to ask questions… And to come out in support of Hassan Diab.
RAGING GRANNIES [SINGING]: There is no proof that he was there when the horrendous crime took place.
LINDA: My son was a student at Carleton, and he heard about it, and he called me. He told me about it, mum, he says, this doesn’t make any sense.
RAGING GRANNIES [SINGING]: Extradition should never happen in the face of counter proof…
BERNIE: There were 2 or 3 key pieces of evidence that not only didn’t add up it came to a point where I just couldn’t believe that people didn’t understand that this was not the guy
ALEX: Even so – after one of the longest extradition hearings in Canadian history, the justice minister approved the extradition. And Hassan Diab was put on a plane to France.
HASSAN: At night, they put me on the plane, and here we go. It’s like… you feel, or you wish if the plane goes down, I don’t care anymore now.
TREVIDIC: I must admit that I was happy. All the policemen who dealt with the case were very happy, very excited, etc. And I say, no, be careful. It’s just the beginning. It’s not the end for us.
MUSIC
Chapter 1: Arrival in France
DANA: I’m Dana Ballout.
ALEX: I’m Alex Atack.
DANA: From Canadaland, this is the Copernic Affair.
ALEX: On November 14th, 2014, Hassan Diab was flown from Montreal to Paris on an Air France flight, accompanied by Canadian RCMP officers.
DANA: Do you remember what time you arrived in France?
HASSAN: Very early morning. In the early morning of November 15th.
ALEX: He was met by French police on the tarmac.
According to Marc Trevidic, the judge in charge of the case, the police wanted to drive Hassan to the detention centre via Copernic Street – forcing him to look at the synagogue he had allegedly targeted in the attack.
It was meant as a kind of a jab. Marc Trevidic told them no.
And Hassan was driven a different route, to a prison just outside of Paris.
HASSAN: It was cold. And, I had practically no clothes on me except maybe jeans, a t-shirt and a jacket. And practically nothing more than that.
ALEX: You didn’t pack a bag, or they didn’t allow you to bring a bag from Canada or anything?
HASSAN: Zero.
ALEX: Fleury Merogis – one of Europe’s largest detention centres – is known for housing some of France’s most high-profile and dangerous inmates.
And now – Hassan Diab was among them.
MUSIC
Chapter 2: Silence
MONZER: Can I just ask you not to tap too much on the table…
STEPHANE: Okay, I’ll try, I’ll try. Remind me. Yeah, I’m used to banging on the tables when I argue a case!
DANA: Stephane Bonifassi is the first lawyer Hassan Diab hired to represent him in France.
STEPHANE: I’ve been in practice for more than 30 years now. When I was a lawyer for Hassan, it was a little less.
Extradition is something I’ve done in the past. And, and so he felt that I would be a good one to help him with this case. So, that’s how I got involved.
DANA: And he remembers the 1980 attack on the Copernic synagogue very well.
STEPHANE: More than 40 years ago, I was a teenager then. And I remember we had demonstrations in France. People were in the streets. That was an awakening, I would say.
DANA: So in 2014, when he took on the case, Stephane Bonifassi knew how historically important it was in France.
But he also had reservations about the evidence presented to extradite Hassan Diab.
STEPHANE: Yes. Well, clearly, clearly, there was no direct evidence against Hassan. And I think that the Canadian judge in charge of the case summed it up well, you know, he said the case presented by the Republic of France against Mr. Diab is a weak case. The prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial seem unlikely.
DANA: But – he was familiar with Marc Trévidic – the French judge responsible for Hassan Diab’s extradition.
He knew that Trevidic had a reputation as a stubborn investigator. And he worried that he was too laser-focused on getting the case to trial.
STEPHANE: Well. They would hate this. But at the end of the day, investigating judges are prosecutors, right? That’s what I think.
And, admittedly, they can be very good judges.. But at the end of the day, I think the job is about bringing cases to court.
Look, the case at stake is horrendous, right? The facts that we are talking about, even if they took place a very long time ago, are still in our memories. And the fact that Marc Trévidic feels strongly about it is no surprise.
Let’s understand that Marc Trévidic’s purpose was to fight terrorism in France. That’s his goal, and I haven’t got an issue with that.
I guess he felt he had a case, I don’t think he had a case, but he felt differently.
DANA: Marc Trévidic had spent years waiting for a chance to sit down with Hassan Diab face to face – to interrogate him in person about the Copernic attack.
And now – finally – that moment had arrived.
HASSAN: And they’re like to go to see the great buffoon investigative judge.
DANA: Clearly – Hassan Diab was not a fan.
HASSAN: You know, he had this big tunnel vision. He was very overzealous …
DANA: Marc Trévidic was after all the man who spent years pursuing his extradition.
HASSAN: He wanted me there badly
But he had no choice. And a date was set for Hassan to be brought to a courthouse in the centre of Paris.
His lawyer, Stephane Bonifassi, was with him.
HASSAN: So it was an office on the, who knows, fourth, fifth floor, one of those old, very old buildings in Paris where there are underground tunnels where there are mice and stuff like that. And you go into this tower like style. The stairs are – if I remember, I counted them many times, 130 stairs or something.You know, spiral stairs. And you go to his office from the back side, while other people go from elevators and stuff like that.
DANA: Inside the office, they sat down, and Trévidic began his questioning.
ALEX: But – Stephane Bonifassi had a plan.
STEPHANE: Clearly, we said, look, we’re not going to answer.
ALEX: He’d prepared Hassan Diab with a stock response to any and every question he was asked.
A line from the Canadian extradition judge’s report. Quote:
‘The case presented by the Republic of France against Mr. Diab is a weak case; the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial, seem unlikely.’
HASSAN: And therefore, leave us alone. I’m not talking to you.
ALEX: You were just told to say that in response to any questions…
HASSAN: Yeah, I said this from the beginning.
STEPHANE: I strongly recommended him to make that choice. That was not his choice. Oh, we agreed together, of course. But that was my recommendation, right, that he should remain silent.
One of the main reasons I wanted to speak to you is because of this choice Hassan made. Right … I felt I had to tell it. And so that Hassan doesn’t take the blame alone for having made that decision. Of course he accepted my recommendation. But, you know, if you go to a lawyer that has these years of experience, the expected thing to do is to listen to him. So yeah, I wanted to make that point. I think it was important.
I didn’t think that the way the case was positioned, that anything he could say could change Trévidic’s mind. And to the contrary, I believe that whatever Hassan could say would be retained against him.
All they are doing by asking questions is trying to build up on what’s a weak case. That’s all they’re doing.
HASSAN: And he was… I felt he wasn’t happy with this because he wanted to claim the big victory.
ALEX: But did you want to… I mean, obviously, this is the first time you have a chance to talk to Trévidic. Did you – even if it was against your legal advice, did you want to just tell him, like, here is my side of the story?
HASSAN: You know, that’s a good thing because I thought of it a lot. But I will be in a big trap if I talk to this guy because he can deny what I said, and then he can report only one side. And I saw it in his record of the case. in the record of the case, he didn’t say the truth.
ALEX: Hassan had seen the record of Trévidic’s case against him – and felt like this judge was just determined to send him to trial – and there was nothing he could say to change that.
So, in that moment, following the advice of his lawyer, he decided that his best option was to not cooperate.
ALEX: How long does it last with Trévidic asking questions and Hassan not saying anything?
STEPHANE: I think it ended almost there, right? We stopped immediately.
ALEX: The meeting was frustrating for everyone involved. And immediately afterwards, Hassan was taken back to prison.
MUSIC
Chapter 3: Life inside Fleury Merogis
ALEX: After refusing to speak to Marc Trévidic, Hassan’s future in France remained unclear.
He settled into his new reality at Fleury Merogis, a massive complex that looks more like an airport terminal than a prison… except for the impossibly high walls that surround it on all sides.
His cell was on the 4th floor – in an isolated unit.
DANA: No one expects prison conditions to be pleasant. But Hassan Diab’s situation was particularly bleak.
He was locked up in a foreign country in a high-security prison – without friends and family nearby – and with rapists, con men and white-collar criminals for neighbors.
HASSAN: I was discovering a new world, a new culture, a new system. It wasn’t easy at all. And it was depressing. You know, all people would go to meet their families twice per week at least. And I had nobody to meet except the lawyer who would come to tell me what’s going on.
DANA: He described being treated harshly by the prison guards.
HASSAN: They would turn the light on every hour, day and night. Like every hour or so, they turn the light on and they wake you up in the middle of the night. And sometimes they do it, especially some nasty guards, they make noise at the door like 1am, 2am, 3am, just to make sure that they wake you up.
ALEX: What was your mental state like during that time in the French prison?
HASSAN: Yeah, it was… you can’t describe it easily. It’s a mumble jumble, your head. You are in a constant state of hallucination, if I may say. You can’t close your eyes. You sleep while your eyes are half open, and you start hallucinating… No, god, this is a different person. Or, you know, you just see monsters and the world is like, not what you know.
DANA: Hassan told us he was in solitary confinement for nearly 20 hours a day.
HASSAN: The only thing I did was like when they would send me out for two hours every day. I would keep running for the two hours non stop. Even in the eight metres by five metres I would run in a circle until they finish the two hours.
MUSIC
ALEX: As days turned into months – Hassan’s mental state spiraled.
He shut himself off – refusing to speak with prison guards.
HASSAN: The point was for me not to show any weakness to these people who would enjoy it. I wouldn’t even look them in the eye sometimes. Including the guards in France who would ask me sometimes, you know, why you talk to me and you don’t look me in the eye? I said because I don’t see you. You don’t exist.
ALEX: He stopped eating the prison meals, which he believed were a way of controlling him, keeping him subordinate.
Instead, he survived on very basic items that he bought in the canteen and prepared inside his cell.
Like yoghurt.
HASSAN: Yeah, I started with, first yoghurt and onions. It was red onions, but I put it in water for a long time. It would be sweeter. A kilo of onions every week. A kilo of bananas every week. Rice and yoghourt, and I don’t know what. And dandelions? I would find them around the building, when we go down out of the building. I lost maybe 20 pounds or more. I was like, just nothing. The clothes I came with, I couldn’t put them on again.
Chapter 4: Support group efforts continue
DANA: Hassan’s deteriorating physical and mental state started to seriously worry his friends and family.
Back home in Canada, his support group still met every week – strategizing ways to keep Hassan’s case in the public eye.
PROTEST (ARCHIVE): When a Canadian is wrongfully detained overseas, the prime minister must use the full power of their office to intervene…
DANA: Over the years, they held rallies. Made video appeals…
DON PRATT (ARCHIVE): My name is Don Pratt ….. And I’d like to talk with you about my good friend Hassan Diab. This is the last person in the world who could have possibly done this…
DANA: And even gathered outside the Prime Minister’s offices to get his attention.
SUPPORTER (ARCHIVE): For those of you who are watching this live right now, we’re actually inside the [unclear] block, and we’re trying to get a meeting with the prime minister, or just get our date books out so we can arrange a meeting with the prime minister, because Hassan Diab has been held for thirty months…
ALEX: While he was in prison, Hassan’s wife, Rania, spoke with the press often and even shared letters he wrote to her.
RANIA (ARCHIVE): Hope all is well with you all, I miss you tremendously. I could not take [Jouja]’s absence – that’s our daughter Janna – my heart breaks when I remember her. My eyes are wet now. Kiss her good from me.
ALEX: And by 2015 – some of Canada’s biggest human rights organisations began supporting Hassan Diab. Including Amnesty International.
ALEX NEAVE (ARCHIVE): This case has to rocket up to the top of the priority list as to issues that need to be addressed between Canada and France.
DANA: Despite their best efforts, activism and public protests could only go so far.
Supporters of Hassan Diab were asking the Canadian government to reverse an extradition that a Canadian justice minister had already signed off on.
It was a tall ask.
But then – 11 months into his detention, Hassan Diab got some important news.
HASSAN: Bang! They changed the judge.
MUSIC
Chapter 5: New judges
ALEX: By 2015, Marc Trévidic’s term as investigative judge in the anti-terrorism unit was drawing to a close.
TREVIDIC: It was a law. So of course I would never have quit anti-terrorism at this period. But in August 2015, I was obliged to leave.
ALEX: The position is a fixed term job – and it only lasts 10 years.
DANA: Must have been hard to leave this job…
TREVIDIC: Oh yeah. Yeah. It was. And the cases and Copernic and the other cases, it was very hard for me. Yeah, but it’s a law. I am a judge and it’s the law. What do you want to do with that?
ALEX: When his term ended, Marc Trévidic was replaced by two investigative judges, who took over the Copernic case.
DANA: By this point, Hassan Diab was on the hunt for a new lawyer, too.
He felt like Stephane Bonifassi wasn’t giving his case enough attention – so started looking for a replacement.
HASSAN: And I had to interview a few lawyers before they took over, because I didn’t want to repeat the same mistake.
I said, yes, it’s my life, guys, if you don’t know how to save my life, I don’t want you.
I wanted somebody who would has more connections to the circle of the judges and other top lawyers.
DANA: In the end, he hired a man named William Bourdon.
Who called him up, around a month later – with some news…
HASSAN: He told me and he said, Hassan, I want you to think this is a new judge. And he said he will be open to – he will not start from prejudgments or whatever. I said, I don’t trust him until I hear more about him. They said, yes, he’s very fair. But, you know, knowing what I knew at the time, I said, there is nothing called fair judges in France.
DANA: Were you happy?
HASSAN: No. There’s nothing called happy. Oh my goodness. That was the last thing I would have thought of. I was still full of like, oh no, no, no, these people are… I don’t know which wolf will eat you in the end. They are all wolves for me.
ALEX: This time there were two judges on the case – Richard Foltzer and Jean Marc Herbaut.
They declined our interview requests.
Which wasn’t a huge surprise – because they rarely speak to the media. There are very few traces of them online – no newspaper write-ups, radio features or talk show interviews. Barely even a picture of what they look like.
Foltzer and Herbaut seemed like the polar opposite of the previous judge, Marc Trévidic – who was a media darling.
Trévidic told us that, when it’s time to hand your cases over to another judge, there’s sometimes an informal meeting, or a phone call. Just to get the newcomer up to speed.
But – neither Herbaut nor Foltzer called.
TREVIDIC: He never asked me questions about the case. I respect that. My colleague didn’t want to have my point of view. I can understand that. I think he didn’t want to be influenced by me. That’s all.
ALEX: We can’t know for sure why neither of these new judges called Marc Trévidic for his insight on the case, given he’d worked on it for nearly a decade.
But we do know what they wrote in court documents.
DANA: Overall, Judge Herbaut praised Marc Trédivic’s work.
But it had been almost a year since Hassan Diab was extradited, and he had yet to face trial.
So Herbaut felt some urgency to reach a decision because – he wrote – the case was “old, serious and there is a man in prison.”
While Hassan Diab was advised to remain silent in his interviews with Trévedic… this time, his new lawyer recommended he talk…
And he listened.
On a cold January day, he was taken into the same office in the centre of Paris where he first met with Marc Trévidic.
Through the tunnels, up the spiral staircase, and into what was now Judge Herbaut’s office.
HASSAN: That translator was there. I would understand sometimes part of the question, sometimes not, because I have already spent one year and more in jail, learned some more French. He was clear with his questions, and he was thorough. Very smart. Not like your average judge in France. I was shocked, like to see the guy was, like, on top of everything, and then I had this, you know, ambivalent kind of feeling about him, like, is he acting or he’s pretending to be fair?
ALEX: You didn’t know if you could trust him.
HASSAN: No. You don’t. You know, in this situation. Who do you trust? And I said, guys, I will give you a chance. I will talk to you. I hope you’re not biassed. And I talked to them. They interrogated me for three different days.
DANA: After more than a year in prison in France, six years of extradition hearings before that, years of surveillance, and several months in a Canadian jail… This was the first time Hassan Diab sat down and agreed to share his side of the story with a French judge.
MUSIC
ALEX: Not only did Hassan Diab start talking… someone else did, too.
DANA: Herbaut, what was he like?
NAWAL: He looked very professional to me, as I would expect a judge. You know, you just sit there and listen and don’t, show any reactions, neither good nor bad. Just listen and ask the questions. So his demeanour was, for me, more professional.
ALEX: Seven years after following legal advice to not answer Marc Trévidic’s questions when Hassan was first arrested… Nawal Copty was willing to cooperate with these new judges.
She told us she’d always felt like it was a mistake not to talk when she was asked before.
And now, this was her chance to go on the record with her version of events.
She was asked to come to Paris and talk to the judges in person.
And she did. This time, without a lawyer. She paid for her own flight – and was interviewed for two days.
DANA: The judges found Nawal Copty and Hassan Diab’s cooperation notable.
In Herbaut’s testimony, he described Hassan as willing to answer all his questions, even those that made him uncomfortable.
He said: “Sometimes, a suspect’s statements change the face of the case, and frankly, this was the case during Hassan Diab’s interrogations. He gave me more or less credible explanations, which could not be dismissed out of hand.”
MUSIC
ALEX: Herbaut and Foltzer were the ones who uncovered those documents from the Lebanese University – which confirmed Hassan Diab’s exams did take place in October 1980 – right around the time of the bombing.
And that he passed those exams.
The judges also collected testimony from former classmates who vouched for Hassan being in Lebanon for the exams.
They also said they didn’t remember him travelling anywhere during that time.
DANA: There were other points too.
Similar to Don Bayne’s arguments during the extradition hearings, the judges agreed that those intelligence reports that named Hassan Diab as one of the bombers were not credible.
They wrote that the reports sometimes contradicted themselves, or just contained outright falsehoods.
We mentioned this last episode – that we’ve seen one of these reports for ourselves – and it’s true. It does contain several basic mistakes.
ALEX: The judges also didn’t fully trust the testimony from Youssef el Khalil – Hassan Diab’s former friend who’d said that he was a member of a political party linked to the PFLP.
And they also found contradictions in Youssef El Khalil’s testimony, which they said seriously called his credibility into question.
And they pointed out that – even if there was evidence that Hassan Diab had been involved with the PFLP – this didn’t tie him directly to the Copernic attack.
DANA: Herbaut and Foltzer also expressed regret that some procedural mistakes were made over the years.
For instance: more DNA evidence could have been gathered after the bombing – but
wasn’t.
ALEX: The judges did have some reservations – they brought up Jean Chichizola, the French reporter who travelled to Canada, told Hassan he was a suspect in the Copernic case, and wrote an article about it.
If he was guilty, they wrote, Hassan Diab had almost a year between Chichizola’s visit and his arrest to hide any incriminating evidence.
DANA: Jean Marc Herbaut and Richard Foltzer spent two years investigating this case. In the end, they decided the evidence against Hassan Diab was insufficient.
The last line of their report reads, in bold: Quote:
“We order accordingly the immediate release of Hassan Naim Diab.”
MUSIC
Chapter 6: Return to Canada
HASSAN: The story of January 12th.
DANA: January 12th, 2018.
More than three years after his extradition, and just two days after the order of dismissal, one of Hassan Diab’s lawyers, Apolline Cagnat, called him to break the news.
HASSAN: Hey. What happened? She said we got the decision this morning but we couldn’t convey it to you,
So what happened? She said, oh, it’s non-lieu in French, they call it. Or they dropped the charges.
I said, what do you mean? Hassan, they dropped the charges. I said, could you repeat it again? I didn’t believe her.
DANA: Hassan says he went back to his cell in a frenzy – rushing to gather all his things. Mainly books and journals collected over the years.
HASSAN: The letters from Canada, the most important thing was the letters and the diary.
I don’t want to leave before I, you know, make sure that I got everything. And I wanted to give the stuff to other inmates.
ALEX: He waited in his cell, ready to go. Hours passed.
HASSAN: 12 something. They came, the guard. I heard chuck, chuck, chuck in the door and he opened the door. He didn’t say you are free or anything. He didn’t say a word. I was sitting on the bed, a little bed, you know, metal with the bags.
ALEX: He got up and followed the guard. As they walked by, another inmate noticed, and called out to him.
HASSAN: He said, Hassan, what are you out? I said, yes, and he started banging on the heavy metal door – ‘liberté, liberté.’ The whole floor was bang bang ‘liberté’… to the point we were on the fourth floor and the banging on the door with a big sound and noise, brought all the guards ready to maybe 15, 20 guards coming to see what’s happening. And these people didn’t stop. ‘Liberté’ Hassan, ‘liberté’, bang bang, liberté!
MUSIC
DANA: It’s a very dramatic scene Hassan describes, like something from a movie. We spoke to another prisoner who was there at the time. He doesn’t recall the details but does remember the chanting.
ALEX: By the afternoon… Hassan Diab was released.
He showed us a couple of pictures from that day.
In one of them, he’s standing in front of the prison fence wearing a scarf and a black puffer jacket. His hands are on his waist. He looks gaunt, a little shell shocked. But also – triumphant.
In another photo, he’s standing with his legal team. They’re holding up wine glasses, celebrating.
A few hours later, he was on a flight out of Paris – escorted by officials from the Canadian embassy in France.
The details of his flight were kept secret in case the press caught on and somehow disrupted his return.
DANA: The plane flew from Paris to Reykjavík, Iceland.
One Canadian official offered Hassan her first-class seat and moved back to his seat in economy.
HASSAN: So we go to Iceland. With the ambassador waiting for me at the airport. I said, since when? Everybody knows me, now everybody loves me.
DANA: And then from Iceland to Toronto.
HASSAN: Toronto airport, then to Ottawa, and the Canadian police are helping me with moving from one place to another.
ALEX: Hassan Diab supporters gathered at the arrivals section of Ottawa’s airport – just after midnight. Waiting for his flight to land.
ROGER: The news of Hassan’s release came through on the Friday. And here we are on late Monday night… is it really happening? Is he coming here? So there was that feeling – excitement.
ALEX: Roger Clark, a former head of Amnesty International in Canada, was there among the crowd.
ROGER: Rania and the two kids were there. They had flowers with them, roses, I think, both of the kids were carrying a big bunch of roses, and everybody was looking up, the escalator that comes down from the arrivals area.
And then suddenly there he is.
MUSIC
You know, it almost felt like a miracle that there was Hassan, cheerful, coming down the elevator with his scarf around and so on.
There’s really no way to sort of explain, or to even describe the joy that we felt.
MUSIC
ALEX: A few days later, Hassan Diab gave a press conference at the Amnesty International offices.
He wore that same scarf but this time with a suit and tie.
He looked tired, but happy.
HASSAN PRESS CONFERENCE “Well justice has finally prevailed. I can start with this. Miracles can happen, still these days…”
DANA: Alex Neve, who headed up Amnesty International Canada at the time – sat next to him.
ALEX NEVE: And it’s one of those moments in my decades of human rights work that that I’ll never forget, one of those those precious moments where you have a sense of of victory, a sense of jubilation, a sense of at the end of the day, yes, you know, you stick with it long enough, you persevere and justice does prevail.
NEWSREEL (ARCHIVE): That is Hassan Diab speaking publicly today for the first time, just after leaving France…
DANA: Hassan Diab’s return sparked a media frenzy in Canada.
NEWSREEL (ARCHIVE): In the end, it was the lack of evidence that prompted a French judge to let Diab go. Now his lawyer wants Canada to take a long hard look at our extradition laws.
NEWSREEL (ARCHIVE): He had one of the best lawyers in Canada working for him for free for nine years, more that $1m in legal bills, an army of supporters, and he still spent 38 months in a French prison without ever facing a charge.
DANA: And in a major win for Hassan Diab, a few months after he was released, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, publicly commented on his case.
ARCHIVE (JUSTIN TRUDEAU): I think for Hassan Diab, we have to recognize first of all that what happened to him never should’ve happened. This is something that obviously was an extremely difficult situation to go through for himself and his family.
ALEX NEVE: We all, really felt like that was the end. I think there was this sense of confidence that, surely now, no matter what continued to happen in the French legal system, everything was now going to go in his favour… And how wrong we were.
MUSIC
DANA: Next time, on The Copernic Affair…
ARCHIVE (NEWSREEL): On Monday, France’s top court put Hassan Diab on trial in connection with a 43 year old bombing attack outside a Paris synagogue. This trial comes five years after a lower court set Diab free due to a lack of evidence…
HASSAN: I was in France for more than three years, and I told my story to the professional judges, not to the circus, media style trial and court. If it wasn’t enough. I don’t think they will be satisfied.
BENJAMIN: [speaking French]
CATHERINE: He says that it was a real disgrace that Hassan Diab didn’t come to court. Normally that wouldn’t be allowed to happen.
ORON: The whole thing was very emotional. I mean to a French court, 40-something years after the attack … we all felt that after so many years, at last, someone takes this attack more seriously, and finally, we have some sort of procedures here.
DON: Well, there wasn’t anybody from France there for Hassan. It was just us. Just the two of us.
NAWAL: I think it was important for me to go and say what I know about Hassan and tell them the facts.
Credits
DANA: The Copernic Affair is a production of Canadaland in partnership with House of Many Windows.
The series is written and produced by me, Dana Ballout, and Alex Atack.
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 to Jonathan Najarian and Antonia Kerrigan
