A Norwegian court has approved a French extradition request for Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, a suspect linked to an attack in a Jewish restaurant in Paris in 1982 that killed six people and injured twenty-two.
The ruling concerns only whether the legal grounds are met for an extradition. It can be appealed. Once the judicial process is completed, the decision of whether or not to extradite Abu Zayed will ultimately be up to Norway’s government.
On August 9, 1982, a grenade was thrown by a group of four terrorists into Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant in the rue des Rosiers in Paris, exploding in the midst of about 50 customers, followed by a shooting assault. The commando threw a second grenade to cover its escape, and continued to shoot in the alleys of Paris. Behind them, the horror: six dead and twenty-two wounded, some of whom are seriously hit.
The attack was blamed on the Abu Nidal Organization, a splinter group of the militant Palestinian Fatah group.
France has spent years pursuing Abu Zayed who is one of four suspects with international arrest warrants against them. He is believed to be one of the shooters.
Abu Zayed has lived in Norway since 1991 and has Norwegian citizenship, and the country has had a policy of not extraditing its nationals.
A recently implemented deal between Norway, Iceland and the EU has paved the way for extradition.