forty years later, a first national tribute and still no trial

For the first time in forty years, a national tribute was paid on Tuesday, August 9, to the victims of the attack on rue des Rosiers, which left six dead and twenty-two injured on August 9, 1982. The ceremony was is held at the intersection of rue des Rosiers and rue Ferdinand-Duval, in the 4^e district of Paris, in the heart of the Jewish quarter of the Marais. The attack, which began at 1.15 p.m., targeted customers and staff at the Ashkenazi restaurant Jo Goldenberg, first attacked with grenades and then machine-gunned by two groups of armed men who arrived separately, suspected members of the Fatah-Revolutionary Council (Fatah-CR), a Palestinian dissident radical group at the time based in Iraq and led by the terrorist Abu Nidal.

Intervened almost two years after the attack targeting the synagogue on rue Copernic (16^e arrondissement of Paris), that of the rue des Rosiers marked, at the time and for a long time, the most serious anti-Semitic attack in France since the Second World War. It therefore took four decades for the State and the City of Paris to pay joint tribute to the victims and their relatives.

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“Why this anti-Semitic act? »

In addition to the ambassadors of Israel, the United States and Norway, the ceremony on Tuesday was held in the presence of a deputy mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, a representative of the mayor of Paris-Centre, Ariel Weil, MP for Paris Clara Chassaniol (Renaissance) and President of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), Yonathan Arfi. The Keeper of the Seals, Eric Dupond-Moretti, spoke last to assure the victims and their relatives of the solidarity of the State.

Before the Minister of Justice, two victims of the attack spoke. Obviously very moved and tired, Jacqueline Niego, 83, who lost her older brother André in the attack, could not finish reading the text she had prepared. She had time to recall that he had escaped Nazi barbarism by hiding with his sister. Then she insisted: “For us families, the same questions have persisted for forty years. Why this anti-Semitic act? Who are the real sponsors? How they [les terroristes] could they cross our borders so easily? So many questions with no real answers. » She welcomed the extradition by Norway of a suspect in December 2020. He is the only one in pre-trial detention in France to date.

Palestinian of Norwegian nationality, Walid Abdulrahman Abou Zayed, 63, was indicted for assassinations and attempted assassinations. He proclaims his innocence and denies both his membership in Fatah-RC and his presence in France at the time of the events. He only admits having undergone training in the camps of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon, at the very beginning of the 1980s, then having emigrated illegally to Norway in 1991 with his wife and two children. The investigating judges rely, in the context of his indictment, on the testimonies of former Fatah-CR militants who incriminate him. An assessment validated by the investigating chamber, which refused to question the indictment.

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