Forty years, three months and twenty-four days of proceedings, of forgetfulness, of grief, of hope and of fear.
And, at the end of one of the longest French judicial tunnels, a decision brutally burying the case or paving the way for a trial.
The Copernicus affair is decidedly out of the ordinary.
On Wednesday, the investigative chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal must rule on the dismissal from which the man suspected of having, on October 3, 1980, laid a bomb in front of the synagogue on rue Copernic in Paris, killing 4 and wounding 46.
Without a delay in the religious service, this anti-Semitic attack carried out by a Palestinian group, the PFLP-Special Operations, could have killed dozens of worshipers.
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Attack of the rue Copernic: the risk of the fiasco after forty years of instruction
The court of appeal has two options.
It can confirm the dismissal pronounced in 2018, to the surprise of investigators who worked on the case, in favor of the Canadian of Lebanese origin Hassan Naim Diab, a 67-year-old sociologist.
Leaving many questions unanswered, the file will be closed.
This is what defense lawyers, Mes Bourdon, Cagnat and Lefebvre are hoping for, who told AFP:
"This order of dismissal, logically, must be confirmed, given the importance exculpatory elements. "
As for Diab, extradited to France in 2014 and returned to Canada after the dismissal, he judges that
"justice has been done",
although the procedure continued in Paris after the appeal of the prosecution.
It is true that his Canadian lawyer did not hesitate to qualify him as
"Dreyfus of our time".
The investigating chamber can also refer the Canadian to a special assize court.
Canada, which took six years to extradite him, from 2008 to 2014, would he agree to send him back to its French judges?
If not, the trial would take place in the absence of the accused.
But there would be a trial.
This is what the many civil parties, associations and individuals expect.
Representing the French Association of Victims of Terrorism and Corinne Adler, who, aged 13, was celebrating her bar mitzvah (religious ceremony for young girls), Me Father thus wishes
"that a trial can be held"
.
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Like Me Cahen, lawyer for the synagogue and for the Shagrir and Barbé families, who lost one of their own.
For him, faced with the doubts that persist,
"only a court can in a contradictory manner decide on the guilt or innocence of Hassan Diab"
.
This is what the public prosecutor's office and the general prosecutor's office are asking for, the first estimating in his indictment of 2017, that
"the involvement (of Hassan Diab) is based on solid elements"
and considering as
"necessary an examination by a trial court and a contradictory discussion of the elements for the prosecution and the defense ”.
Clue bundle
If there was a trial, it would be exciting.
On the defense side, we would plead innocence based on a defense of alibis.
The ex-wife of Diab and several of his acquaintances assure that he was in Beirut on October 3, 1980. On the side of the prosecution, a bundle of clues: police notes
"converging and repeated",
strong resemblance to the portraits -robots from 1980, passport indicating that Diab was in Europe, and not in Lebanon, on
October 3, 1980, testimonies from relatives implicating him in the Palestinian movement and forensic graphologists making a link between the suspect's handwriting and the terrorist.
During the procedure, the investigating chamber repeatedly rejected the provisional release of Hassan Diab, considering that
"there are serious and consistent clues making it plausible (his) implication in the acts with which he is accused" .
