A Lebanese-Canadian academic has been convicted in absentia of terrorism charges and sentenced to life in prison over a bombing outside a Paris synagogue in 1980 that killed four and wounded 46.

The court in the French capital issued an arrest warrant for Hassan Diab, who lives in Ottawa, Canada, and denies wrongdoing.

His lawyers say he was in Lebanon at the time of the attack and is a victim of mistaken identity.

The trial marked the culmination of decades of investigation into one of France’s longest unsolved crimes.

French authorities accuse Diab of planting the bomb outside the synagogue where 320 worshipers had gathered to mark the end of a Jewish holiday on the evening of October 3 1980, including children celebrating their bar mitzvahs.

French investigators attributed the synagogue attack to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-Special Operations but no one ever claimed responsibility.

The conviction was a surprise to many even in the court. Among the defence witnesses was a magistrate who investigated the case and testified that there was not enough evidence to convict Diab.

The head of France’s leading Jewish group, CRIF, welcomed the conviction, and urged Canada to arrest Diab.

The victims’ lawyers said the long-awaited trial will serve as a deterrent to other terrorist acts and antisemitic sentiments.

French authorities accused Diab of planting the bomb on a motorbike outside the synagogue on Rue Copernic.

Investigators initially suspected far-right extremists before shifting their focus to Palestinian militants.

Canada authorised Diab’s extradition to France in 2014 as part of the investigation, but after three years in pre-trial detention, anti-terrorism judges ordered him to be freed due to lack of evidence.

Then an appeals court ruled that he should stand trial on terrorism charges. Diab remained in Canada throughout the trial, which started earlier this month.

For those touched by the attack, the trial was a long-awaited opportunity to speak publicly about what happened.

Survivors described years of physical and mental trauma. Some said the sound of motorcycles haunted them after that night. Families of those killed mourned lost children or siblings.

Prosecutors argued that Diab has been lying to himself for 40 years and is caught up in his denial and escape from reality.

Diab’s lawyer William Bourdon had pleaded for an acquittal, saying that convicting someone would be “a judicial mistake”.

Amnesty International was among those which called for the court to drop what they called a flawed and baseless case, arguing that it “undermines effective justice for victims”.

Some lawyers for the 18 people and six groups that were party to the case acknowledged that it was hard to build a case so many years later, especially without the kind of DNA evidence or mobile phone data used in current investigations.

Pakistan’s government and an outlawed radical Islamist party reached an agreement to end a 10-day long, and at times deadly violent, rally calling for the closure of France’s embassy and the release of the party’s leader.

Neither foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi nor religious leader Mufti Muneebur Rehman, who took part in the talks, gave any details of the agreement at a news conference in the capital Islamabad.

Thousands of supporters of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party marched from Lahore on October 22 toward the capital Islamabad.

They demanded the expulsion of France’s envoy to Pakistan over publication of caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed in France.

The protest march saw supporters clash with police at several points along the way.

At least seven police officers and four demonstrators were killed.

“Details and positive results of the agreement will come before the nation in a week or so,” said Mr Rehman, who said he had the endorsement of TLP party leader Saad Rizvi.

The violence erupted a day after the government of prime minister Imran Khan said it would not accept the Islamists’ demand to close the French Embassy and expel the French envoy.

It was not immediately clear on Sunday when the party would end its rally.

Thousands of supporters halted their march in Wazirabad, about 115 miles from the capital on Friday after roads and bridges ahead of them were blocked.

Paramilitary rangers were deployed to stop the protesters from continuing toward the capital.

Sajid Saifi, TLP spokesman, said supporters were ready to “pack up” but were awaiting instructions from the party’s leadership.

He said he hoped party leader Mr Rizvi and all the supporters arrested in recent days would be released soon.

Besides demanding expulsion of the French ambassador, the TLP was also pressing for the release of its leader, Mr Rizvi, who was arrested last year for inciting supporters to stage an anti-France protest.

Mr Rizvi’s party started demanding the expulsion of a French envoy in October 2020 after French President Emmanuel Macron tried to defend caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed as freedom of expression.

Mr Macron’s comments came after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown the caricatures in class.

The images were republished by the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to mark the opening of the trial over the deadly 2015 attack against the publication for the original caricatures.

Mr Rizvi’s party gained prominence in Pakistan’s 2018 elections, campaigning on the single issue of defending the country’s blasphemy law, which calls for the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam.

French authorities have detained a fifth person in an anti-terrorism investigation seeking to identify potential accomplices and motives after a police official was fatally stabbed at a police station outside Paris.

French police killed the 37-year-old Tunisian attacker shortly after he stabbed the unarmed administrative employee on Friday at the entrance of her police station in the town of Rambouillet.

At a news conference, anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said police are questioning a cousin of the suspect.

The suspect’s father, a couple who had provided him with an address for mail and other administration, and another cousin were also being questioned, Mr Ricard said.

The victim, a National Police employee, had left the station to extend her time on a parking meter and was followed into the entry area and stabbed by the attacker.

He was then shot dead by a police officer.

The attacker, identified by authorities as Jamel G, entered France illegally in 2009 and was given residency papers at the end of 2019, Mr Ricard said.

He was a practising Muslim according to his father, Mr Ricard added.

He had staked out the police station ahead of time and listened to religious songs inciting “jihad” just before the attack, according to evidence found on his mobile phone.

Witnesses heard him say “Allahu akbar!”, Arabic for God is great, during the attack, he said.

The man had no criminal record or evidence of radicalisation, Mr Ricard said, stressing that investigations are taking place to determine whether people helped or inspired the attacker, in “close co-ordination” with Tunisian judicial authorities.

Read more: Woman, 18, arrested in France over ‘plot’ targeting church

French anti-terrorism investigators said that an 18-year-old woman arrested over the Easter weekend was suspected of planning an attack on a church.

New details have emerged about the teen, who was living in Beziers, in southern France, and is suspected of plotting an attack targeting nearby Montpellier over Easter.

On Thursday, anti-terrorism officials said that during a search of her home they found a photo of the schoolteacher beheaded by a radical Islamist in October.

Samuel Paty was murdered after showing caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class.

Officials also said that bomb-making materials were found in the apartment, as well as photos of “armed jihadists”, a diagram of a nearby church and handwritten notes referring to the Nazis and the Islamic State group.

The teenager, who has not been identified, was not previously known to authorities.

Authorities stressed that no constructed explosives were found.

Read more: New arrest by French investigators probing church attack in Nice

Students helped killer find teacher who was beheaded, says French prosecutor

On the 30th of October, a rally of about a hundred protestors rounded on the French Embassy in Central London and conducted a ‘sit-in’ around the bounds of the Embassy. The demonstrators, it seems, had traveled to London to shower the Embassy with chants and raised fists in the air. It was a show of force and rage against the comments of Macron, who had defended the fundamental principle of free speech, in defending the right for Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. Macron had also subsequently made numerous statements delineating the Government of France from the actions of the Charlie Hebdo publication and even expressly stated that France has “no problem” with the religion of Islam that is practised by over 1.7 billion people. However, none of the context and nuances of the French premier mattered to the demonstrators in the video below. Their rage is clearly evident in the video, much of it looking like it was stage managed by a core handful of people.

What is clear from the footage below is that many of the demonstrators were a mix of people of South Asian heritage and many seemed to follow the rehearsed chants of a handful of agitators who were repeatedly and aggressively shouting slogans with their fists in the air. We will come back to these slogans later as we believe that public order offences were conducted by some of the demonstrators and we have noted the times in the video when we believe they took place. 

The Link to Khatme Nabuwat (KN)

Khatme Nabuwat is a loose affiliation of people at a global level whose primary aim is to defend the honour and integrity of Prophet Muhammad, by placing him as a central figure in their lives. They see themselves as ‘defenders against blasphemy’ which we have long said, is affecting parts of Barelwi Muslim communities, not just in the UK, but at a global level. Khatme Nabuwat networks feed off themselves and are therefore a sporadic modern day version of the Spanish Inquisition, where anyone seen to question the divinity or events around Prophet Muhammad, become legitimate targets for intimidation, harassment and hate. Take for example, this incident where ‘Kill Ahmadis’ leaflets were reported to have been found in a South London mosque. It was reportedly authored by an ex-head of Khatme Nabuwat, with the leaflets sending shock waves and fear into the British Muslim Ahmadi community at the time.

Khatme Nabuwat’s constant obsession with Ahmadis, had led to targeted acts of intimidation against them, as a means of rallying others to their cause. This has meant threats and incitement against Ahmadi Muslims on the basis that they question the finality of Prophet Muhammad. This is fundamentally false or ‘fake news’, yet none of this matters, since the ‘blasphemy police’ and mob type behaviour of Khatme Nabuwat networks regard anyone who simply questions elements around the life of Prophet Muhammad, as fair game for violence. So not much has changed in their medievalist mindsets.

Anyone watching and listening to the video below may come to the conclusion that free speech comes with caveats and limitations as the speaker rants against the very values that give him the right to speak so openly. In other words, free speech is fine as long as nothing is directed towards Muhammad, which aptly demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy of these ‘blasphemy policing’ networks. But this is no laughing matter since the spread of such intolerance has impacts and we have seen how this very intolerance led to an asylum seeker in France using a meat cleaver against two people who happened to be outside the former offices of the Charlie Hebdo publication. Their crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, whilst they had a smoke.

The perpetrator of these attempted murders was Ali Hassan, who left Pakistan when he was 15 and who entered Europe illegally. Hassan put out a video prior to the attack in which he explained that he was from Kotli Qazi in Pakistan and he cited his family lineage and then put out an emotional defence of Muhammad on the back of the cartoon reprints by Charlie Hebdo. These reprints coincided with the trial of fourteen people alleged to be accomplices of the initial Charlie Hebdo attackers in 2015.

The fact is that Hassan came from a Barelwi Muslim background, who have mainly been influenced by Sufi traditions and who have taken a much more spiritual approach to faith. However, the issue of ‘blasphemy’ and the defence of the Prophet has significantly shifted members from this Muslim grouping towards harder and more extreme beliefs. One of these beliefs is that threats and violence are legitimate in the defence of the reputation of Muhammad. This is particularly depressing given that Barelwi Muslim communities by enlarge, have been more spiritually and religiously flexible in their interpretation of Islamic theology and traditions. 

Blasphemy linkages

The brutal attack in Paris by Hassan cannot be seen to be in isolation. It is part of a wider ideology, which at its core is built on the need to use threats and force against people merely perceived to be blasphemous. It is simply now reaching a murderous form in European states, even though the history of blasphemy in Pakistan, has seen people brutally murdered by mobs on the mere allegation that the victim questioned some aspect of Muhammad or his life.

Which brings us back to the video below. At 14:16 mins into the video – demonstrators are seen to specifically mention the ideology of Khatme Nabuwat and to rouse the crowd on the back of these chants outside of the French Embassy in London. Worst still, at 22:38 mins into the video, a number of the demonstrators are led to chant “Death to Macron” – (Macron Murdabad). These actions we believe, are public order offences and may well fall into incitement, which need to be reviewed by the Metropolitan Police Service (Met), given the public affirmation of threats to the well-being of the French President. 

Words and actions have consequences. At the very least, the Met need to assess the video for any criminal actions. Sadly, the issue of extremism based on perceived blasphemy is not going away for some time to come.

Read More: French militant group and mosque to close after teacher’s killing

The 18-year-old suspected killer of a French teacher who showed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in class paid students to help him identify the victim, France’s terrorism prosecutor has said.

Prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old are among seven people who appeared before an investigating magistrate on accusations of complicity in murder in relation with a terrorist undertaking, and criminal conspiracy.

The suspect in Friday’s killing of teacher Samuel Paty, who was attacked and beheaded near Paris, offered students at the school 300 to 350 euros (£267 to £311) to help him pick out, Mr Ricard said during a news conference on Wednesday.

“The investigation has established that the perpetrator knew the name of the teacher, the name of the school and its address, yet he did not have the means to identify him,” the prosecutor said.

“That identification has only been possible with the help of students from the same school.

“That’s why the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office has decided to prosecute two under-18 minors whose implication in the identification of the victim for the killer has appeared to be conclusive.”

A terror investigation is under way into Mr Paty’s killing.

Authorities have identified the killer as Abdoullakh Anzorov., an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee who was later shot dead by police.

The surviving suspects also include a student’s father who posted videos on social media that called for mobilisation against the teacher and an Islamist activist who helped the man disseminate the virulent messages, which named Mr Paty and gave the school’s address, Mr Ricard said.

Two more men are accused of having helped the attacker by accompanying him when he bought weapons including a knife and an airsoft gun that were found near the 18-year-old’s body, according to the prosecutor.

Another suspect had close contacts with the attacker and endorsed radical Islamism, Mr Ricard said.

The French government issued an order on Wednesday morning to dissolve domestic militant Islamic group the Collective Cheikh Yassine.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said it was “implicated, linked to Friday’s attack” and was used to promote anti-republican hate speech.

Other groups will be dissolved “in the coming weeks” for similar reasons, Mr Attal said.

Named after an assassinated leader of the Palestinian Hamas, Collective Cheikh Yassine was founded in the early 2000s by an Islamist activist who is among the seven people accused of being accomplices to the attacker.

Mr Attal also confirmed the government ordered a mosque in the north-east Paris suburb of Pantin to close for six months.

It is being punished for relaying the angry father’s message on social media.

Authorities say it has long had an imam following the Salafist path, a rigorous interpretation of the Muslim holy book.

A national memorial event is scheduled to be held Wednesday evening in the courtyard of the Sorbonne university.

Read More here: French militant group and mosque to close after killing

Suspect in French beheading was Chechen in origin

Demonstrations across France to mark the killing of Samuel Paty

Demonstrations have been called around France in support of freedom of speech and to pay tribute to a history teacher who was beheaded near Paris after discussing caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed with his class.

Samuel Paty was decapitated on Friday by an 18-year-old Moscow-born Chechen refugee, who was then shot dead by police.

Political leaders, associations and unions will rally on Sunday afternoon in Paris and other major cities including Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Nantes, Marseille, Lille and Bordeaux.

The gatherings come as French authorities said they have detained a 10th person following the horrific attack in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, north-west of Paris.

French anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said an investigation for murder with a suspected terrorist motive has been opened.

At least four of those detained are family members of the attacker, who had been granted a 10-year residency in France as a refugee in March, was armed with a knife and an airsoft gun, which fires plastic pellets.

His half-sister joined the Islamic State group in Syria in 2014, Mr Ricard said. He did not give her name, and it is not clear where she is now.

The prosecutor said a text claiming responsibility and a photograph of the victim were found on the suspect’s phone.

He also confirmed that a Twitter account under the name Abdoulakh A belonged to the suspect. It posted a photo of the decapitated head minutes after the attack along with the message “I have executed one of the dogs from hell who dared to put Muhammad down”.

The attack has provoked global condemnation.

US President Donald Trump referred to the killing on Saturday night during a political rally in Janesville, Wisconsin.

“On behalf of the United States, I’d like to extend my really sincere condolences to a friend of mine, President (Emmanuel) Macron of France, where they just yesterday had a vicious, vicious Islamic terrorist attack – beheading an innocent teacher near Paris,” he said. “France is having a hard time and Macron’s a great guy.”

Read more: Suspect in French beheading horror was Chechen teenager

French President Emmanuel Macron has denounced what he called an “Islamist terrorist attack” against a history teacher decapitated in a Paris suburb.

The teacher had discussed caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed with his class, authorities said. The suspected attacker was shot by police after Friday’s beheading.

The French anti-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation concerning murder with a suspected terrorist motive, the prosecutor’s office said.

President Macron visited the school where the teacher worked in the town of Conflans-Saint-Honorine and met with staff after the killing.

An Associated Press reporter saw three ambulances arrive at the scene, and heavily armed police surrounding the area and police vans lining leafy nearby streets.

“One of our compatriots was murdered today because he taught… the freedom of expression, the freedom to believe or not believe,” President Macron said.

He said the attack should not divide France because that is what the extremists want.

“We must stand all together as citizens,” he said.

The gruesome killing of the teacher occurred in the town of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine while the suspect was killed by police in adjoining Eragny.

A police official said the suspect, armed with a knife and an airsoft gun — which fires plastic pellets — was shot dead about 600 metres from where the male teacher was killed after he failed to respond to orders to put down his arms, and acted in a threatening manner.

The teacher had received threats after opening a discussion “for a debate” about the caricatures about 10 days ago, the police official told The Associated Press.

The parent of a student had filed a complaint against the teacher, another police official said, adding that the suspected killer did not have a child at the school. The suspect’s identity was not made public.

The suspect’s identity was not made public. French media reported that the suspect was an 18-year-old Chechen, born in Moscow. That information could not be immediately confirmed.

The two officials could not be named because they were not authorised to discuss ongoing investigations.

“We didn’t see this coming,” Conflans resident Remi Tell said on CNews TV station. He described the town as peaceful.

It was the second terrorism-related incident since the opening of an ongoing trial on the newsroom massacre in January 2015 at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo after the publication of caricatures of the prophet of Islam.

As the trial opened, the paper republished caricatures of the prophet to underscore the right of freedom of expression. Exactly three weeks ago, a young man from Pakistan was arrested after stabbing, outside the newspaper’s former offices, two people who suffered non life-threatening injuries. The 18-year-old told police he was upset about the publication of the caricatures.

Read more on extremism: Osama Bin Laden’s spokesman Adel Abdel Bary cannot just walk into the UK

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to stand firm against racism but also praised police and insisted that France would not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures.

It was the first time Mr Macron has spoken on the issues since George Floyd’s death in the US unleashed protests around the world, including several in France, where demonstrators have expressed anger at racial injustice and police brutality, particularly toward minorities from France’s former colonies in Africa.

Unusually for a French leader, Mr Macron acknowledged that someone’s “address, name, colour of skin” can reduce their chances at succeeding in French society, and called for a fight to ensure that everyone can “find their place” regardless of ethnic origin or religion.

He promised to be “uncompromising in the face of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination”.

However, he insisted that France will not take down statues of controversial, colonial-era figures as has happened in some other countries in recent weeks.

Amid calls for taking down statues tied to France’s slave trade or colonial wrongs, Mr Macron said “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue”.

“We should look at all of our history together” including relations with Africa, with a goal of “truth” instead of “denying who we are”, Mr Macron said.

He did not address accusations of police violence but said forces of order deserve “the nation’s recognition”.

Mr Macron also announced that France will reopen nearly everything starting Monday after three months of virus confinement measures.

The president promised an internal audit into how his administration handled the virus, notably compared to other countries like Germany.

That was in addition to a parliamentary inquiry already under way.

Despite having one of the world’s best health care systems, France was dangerously short of all kinds of masks and testing capacity as coronavirus patients overwhelmed intensive care wards in March.

More than 80 lawsuits have been filed accusing his government of manslaughter, neglect or otherwise mishandling the virus crisis.

Mr Macron sent in the army to help and ordered strict lockdown measures that slowed the spread.

But nearly 30,000 people have died, about half of them in nursing homes, and more than 150,000 have been infected.

More than 200 new virus clusters have emerged since France started reopening May 11, according to the national health agency.

Meanwhile, his government is facing growing pressure to confront racism and police violence.

At least 15,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Saturday, the latest in a string of French protests galvanised by George Floyd’s death in the US and the Black Lives Matter movement, but increasingly focused on France’s own tensions between police and minorities.

In response, the government banned police chokeholds and vowed to stamp out racism among police — but that has now angered police unions, who say they’re being unfairly painted as white supremacists and staged protests of their own.

Calls are also mounting to reassess France’s colonial legacy, causing division within Mr Macron’s own camp.

Over the past two days, the culture minister denounced the decision to cancel a Paris showing of Gone With The Wind, a film long criticised as romanticising slavery, as contrary to freedom of expression.

And he firmly condemned activists who tried to take a piece of African art from a Paris museum dedicated to artwork from former colonies.

But government minister Sibeth Ndiaye, a close Macron ally and the most prominent black figure in current French politics, wrote an unusually personal essay Saturday in Le Monde calling for France to rethink its colour-blind doctrine, which aims at encouraging equality by ignoring race altogether.

“We must not hesitate to name things, to say that a skin colour is not neutral,” she wrote.

She called on the French to “confront our memories” about their history and find a “shared narrative” with former colonies.

Mr Macron’s office firmly denied a report last week that he was considering resigning and calling a snap election, but the rumour reflected the gravity of the French mood.

A new forecast last week from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development showed France’s economy will suffer more than most from the coming recession — and is not expected to improve much by the next presidential election in 2022.

The economy is expected to shrink at least 11% percent this year, pushing many out of work and torpedoing Macron’s goals of bringing down unemployment, rehauling the retirement system and making France more globally competitive.

The alleged gunman who shot and killed five people in a Christmas market attack this month in Strasbourg had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, an official says.

The judicial official said investigators have found a video stored on a USB stick in which Cherif Chekatt had claimed allegiance to the extremist group.

The video was discovered at Chekatt’s home.

Chekatt, 29, died in a shootout with police two days after his December 11 attack at Strasbourg’s popular Christmas market.

Shortly after his death, the Islamic State group’s Amaq news agency claimed he was a “soldier” of the group.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner had rejected the claim as “totally opportunistic”.