Three men wanted over Jo Goldenberg restaurant deaths in 1982 said to have been members of Abu Nidal, a Palestinian splinter group

For more than 30 years, ever since terrorists threw grenades into the packed Jo Goldenberg restaurant in Paris’s Jewish quarter and opened fire on diners, the victims’ families have waited for justice. Their long wait is not yet over, but its end may finally be in sight.

The top terrorism judge in France has announced that three men suspected of attacking the celebrated restaurant in 1982, killing six and injuring 22, have been identified and international arrest warrants issued.

The three men – aged 63, 60 and 54, who are living in Norway, Palestine and Jordan – were allegedly members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, also known as the Abu Nidal organisation, a ruthless Palestinian splinter group accused of carrying out attacks in more than 20 countries in the 1970s and 80s that claimed at least 300 lives.

They are believed to have been part of a five-man commando group that attacked the Goldenberg restaurant at 13.10 on 9 August 1982 while the place was full of lunchtime diners. As they ran off to lose themselves in the narrow streets of Marais, one of Paris’ oldest areas known to local Jews as Le Pletzl, the gunmen shot at passersby. No group claimed responsibility for the Goldenberg attack, no arrests were ever made and the crime remained unsolved.

At the time, it was the second big attack on Jewish targets in Paris since the city’s liberation after the second world war and came just two years after a bomb exploded outside the Copernic synagogue, killing four and injuring 46.



On Wednesday, the identification of the Goldenberg suspects was welcomed by a Jewish community reeling from recent antisemitic murders in Paris and Copenhagen.



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Soldiers and police have been deployed outside schools, synagogues and Jewish organisations in France following the attacks on Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in January, which left 17 people dead. In eastern France, a few weeks later, 250 graves had been vandalised in a Jewish cemetery.

Alain Jakubowicz, president of the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism (Licra), welcomed news of the long-awaited developments in the Goldenberg investigation. “It is a strong message to terrorists, particularly in the current context in Europe following the recent attacks,” Jakubowicz said. “The message to the criminals and the terrorist is that they cannot hide – that however long it takes they will be identified, found and brought to justice. This is also an important message for the families of the victims to have faith in the justice system.”

A rabbi, who did not want to be named, told Europe 1 radio, the identification of the suspects had come as a relief. “But, as they say, it will not bring back the victims. I head the explosions that day. By the time I got there the ambulances had already arrived. The whole community was shocked. Obviously it had an enormous impact on the area and does to to this day. On that day people were hiding under the tables, in the street. In the road in those days there were lots of small Jewish shopkeepers, who have since gone, but we all still remember that day.’

Investigators, led by France’s leading terrorism judge, Marc Trévidic, have spent the last 30 years painstakingly sifting through the minutiae of attacks carried out by Abu-Nidal in Europe.

A comparison of ballistic reports enabled detectives to determine that the arms used in the Goldenberg attack were also used by the group in other attacks. Former members of the Palestinian organisation were also interviewed. One of them claimed Hafez al-Assad, the former Syrian president and father of the current Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, ordered the attack as a “bloody warning to France” against supporting the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri Khalil al-Banna, was described by his biographer, Patrick Seale, as leading shootings of random cruelty. Nidal was reportedly shot dead in his apartment in the Iraqi capital Baghdad in 2001. In al-Banna’s obituary, the Guardian journalist David Hirst described him as a patriot turned psychopath. Hirst wrote: “He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary.”

There were also reports that Nidal secretly admitted he was behind the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing. The Lockerbie disaster happened when a New York-bound Pan Am plane blew up over the town in Scotland, in December 1988, killing 259 passengers and crew, and 11 local residents.

The Goldenberg restaurant is no longer running, its premises now used as a clothes shop. However, a plaque marking the “antisemitic attack” has been placed on the front of the building.

