Canadian officials have wasted no time in sending 60-year-old Ottawa academic Hassan Diab to France, where he faces an investigation into the fatal 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue, reports The Ottawa Citizen.
Police took him from the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre at 5.30 a.m. Friday, less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal of his extradition order.
Diab was flown under guard on an Air France commercial flight out of Montreal’s Trudeau airport and, according to French news media reports, formally indicted Saturday on murder and attempted murder charges and willful destruction of property.
He appeared before a prosecuting judge in Paris on Saturday at the start of an investigative process that French lawyers say could last up to two years.
His Canadian lawyer, Donald Bayne, told the Citizen that he learned Diab was on his way to France when his office called the jail to arrange a visit for Diab’s wife, Rania, and their daughter, Jenna, who turns two on Saturday.