A man wanted in France for over a decade in connection with a deadly 1982 attack on a deli in the heart of Paris’s old Jewish quarter has been arrested by the Palestinian authorities, French officials said on Friday.
The arrest adds a new twist to a drawn-out legal case that has vexed families of the victims of the attack, which killed six people, including two Americans, and scarred the French capital’s Jewish community.
President Emmanuel Macron announced that the suspect, identified by France’s national antiterrorism prosecutor’s office as Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, 70, was arrested in the West Bank. It was not immediately clear when.
In a statement, Mr. Macron welcomed “excellent cooperation” with the Palestinian Authority and said that he would work toward a “rapid extradition” of the suspect, whose arrest France “had been relentlessly seeking.”
“My thoughts go out to all the families who have endured the pain of waiting for so long,” Mr. Macron said.
The antiterrorism prosecutor’s office thanked the Palestinian authorities for a “major procedural breakthrough” and said in a statement that it had been informed of the arrest by Interpol, the global policing body.
France had issued an international arrest warrant for Mr. Abed Adra, who also went by the name Hicham Harb, in March 2015. He is suspected of having supervised and taken part in the 1982 attack, and he faces charges of terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder.
The prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the exact circumstances of Mr. Abed Adra’s arrest, which came days before Mr. Macron was expected to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations.
It was not clear how closely the arrest was tied to Mr. Macron’s decision. But Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s foreign minister, said in a statement that the arrest was the “fruit” of the process Mr. Macron initiated in July to recognize a Palestinian state.
That recognition will “enable us to request extradition,” Mr. Barrot said in a statement.
“Nothing can alter France’s determination to combat terrorism and antisemitism,” he added.
The 1982 attack, which at the time was considered the deadliest antisemitic attack in France since World War II, also wounded 22 people. Several assailants threw a grenade into a restaurant on the Rue des Rosiers, a narrow, lively street, and fired at customers before fleeing.
No group ever formally claimed responsibility for the attack, and for decades the case remained unsolved. Then, in 2015, the French authorities said they had identified three suspects, all of whom lived abroad and were accused of being tied to a small Palestinian terrorist organization that had been blamed for deadly attacks in several countries.
In July, six men were ordered to stand trial in the case — four of them in absentia because they were believed to be abroad, including Mr. Abed Adra.
The other two are currently in France, including Walid Abdulrahman Abou Zayed, a Norwegian citizen of Palestinian origin who was extradited in 2020 and whom prosecutors have accused of being one of the gunmen.
News of the arrest yielded mixed feelings from the families of the victims and their lawyers, who have been frustrated by the investigation’s tortuous progress.
Yohann Taïeb, a spokesman for some of the victims of the attack, said on X that it was a “significant step” and urged Mr. Macron to secure the suspect’s extradition “as quickly as possible.”
But Alain Jakubowicz, a lawyer for the family of one of the victims, called the arrest “false good news” because it could further delay a trial or force France to release Mr. Abou Zayed, who is reaching the time limit for pretrial detention under French law.
“Will the victims’ families ever see this trial?” Mr. Jakubowicz said on X.
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
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