PARIS—A Lebanese-Canadian academic who is the lone suspect in a 1980 bombing outside a Paris synagogue went on trial in absentia Monday, nearly 43 years after four people were killed and 46 wounded in the unclaimed attack.
French authorities identified Hassan Diab as a suspect in 1999. They accuse him of planting the bomb on the evening of Oct. 3, 1980, outside the synagogue where 320 worshipers had gathered to mark the end of a Jewish holiday.
Diab, 69, has denied involvement in the attack and said he was at a university in Beirut at the time of the western Paris bombing. His supporters and lawyers in France and Canada claim Diab has been wrongly pursued by French judicial authorities as a victim of mistaken identity….