A suspect in the 1982 attack on a Jewish restaurant in Paris that killed six people was due to be brought before a judge on Friday – a day after being extradited to France by the Palestinian Authority. The move reopens one of the country’s deadliest post-war cases of antisemitic violence, nearly 44 years later.
Hicham Harb, 72, was handed over on Thursday and detained on arrival near Paris. Anti-terror prosecutors are expected to formally notify him of the arrest warrant against him, the national anti-terrorist prosecution office said.
Harb is accused of helping coordinate the assault on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant on the Rue des Rosiers, in the heart of Paris’s historic Jewish Marais district.
On 9 August 1982, a group of three to five men threw a grenade into the dining room before opening fire on customers, killing six people and wounding 22 others.
French prosecutors said Harb was transferred “in execution of an extradition request” issued in September 2025 and handed over to French judicial authorities on Thursday.
France charges suspect in deadly 1982 Paris Jewish restaurant attack
Cooperation and delays
The extradition followed coordination between France and the Palestinian Authority.
“We thank the Palestinian authorities, who have demonstrated through their cooperation their commitment to fighting terrorism, as President Mahmoud Abbas had promised,” the Elysée said in a statement.
It said the move reflected “the concrete translation of the judicial cooperation that we can now carry out following the recognition of the state of Palestine”.
Palestinian authorities arrested Harb in September 2025. The transfer was delayed by conflict in the Middle East, which led to airspace closures and pushed back the operation by several weeks, France’s foreign ministry said.
France’s recognition of a Palestinian state had created “an appropriate framework for this French request”, Abbas said in a 2025 interview with French daily Le Figaro.
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Several other suspects
The 1982 attack remains one of the most serious antisemitic acts in modern French history. Investigators attributed it to the Fatah Revolutionary Council, a splinter group led by Palestinian militant Abu Nidal that broke away from the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Harb is one of several suspects targeted by arrest warrants in connection with the case. Two other suspects already in France are expected to stand trial after the Court of Cassation, the country's highest court, confirmed in February that proceedings would go ahead.
A lawyer representing victims’ families called for the trial to be held as quickly as possible. “More than four decades have passed, and that is too long,” David Pere said.
Two suspects based in Jordan have not been extradited after the country’s Supreme Court refused France’s request, the foreign ministry said.
Separate investigations in Europe have also linked Harb to other attacks.
He is the subject of a German arrest warrant issued in 1988 over a 1985 attack at Frankfurt airport, and Italian investigators have suspected him of involvement in a 1982 synagogue attack in Rome in which a two-year-old child was killed.
(with AFP)
