French President Emmanuel Macron announced Friday that a suspected terrorist on the run from authorities for 43 years was arrested in the Palestinian territories.
Hicham Harb, 70, was taken into custody by Palestinian officers in the West Bank on charges of participating in the 1982 terrorist attack at the Jo Goldenberg restaurant on Rue des Rosiers in Paris.
“I salute the excellent cooperation with the Palestinian Authority. We are working together toward a swift extradition,” Macron said. “While some of the suspects are to be brought before the Assize Court, this is an additional step for justice and truth.”
“I think of all the families who have carried the pain of waiting for so long,” the president continued. “France does not forget. It always sanctions and punishes. Justice will prevail.”
The 1982 attack, which targeted civilians in the Jewish quarter of France’s capital city, has long been attributed to the Abu Nidal Organization — a prolific terrorist group responsible for dozens of attacks in the late 20th century.
Militants fired machine guns and lobbed grenades into the Jewish restaurant before storming the establishment and shooting victims attempting to escape.
The collaboration between French and Palestinian authorities comes as France prepares to join several other European nations in recognizing a sovereign Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly next week.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot claimed that this recognition “will allow us to seek the extradition” of Harb.
The foreign minister did not clarify what obstacles stand in the way of the suspect’s extradition under the Palestinian territories’ current geopolitical classification.
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The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office has been pursuing the decades-old case aggressively in recent years, making multiple arrests domestically and abroad. The office began pushing in July for a trial of six people it alleges are related to the attack.
Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, 66, was arrested in 2020 while living in Norway under allegations that he was one of the Abu Nidal Organization gunmen. He has vehemently denied the charges, and his wife claims that her husband has never even been to France.
Suspects Nizar Tawfik Mussa and Mahmoud Khader are also set for trial on charges of murder and attempted murder in connection with the terrorist attack.
