Episode 2: The Investigation

Summary

Summary of "The Copernic Affair | Canadaland Investigates"

Episode: Episode 2: The Investigation
Release Date: January 22, 2025
Host/Authors: Dana Balut and Alex Atak
Produced by: Canadaland in partnership with House of Many Windows

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Introduction

In Episode 2 of "The Copernic Affair," titled "The Investigation," Canadaland delves deeper into the enigmatic case surrounding Hassan Diab, a sociology professor in Canada accused of orchestrating a 1980 bomb attack on a synagogue in Paris. Hosts Dana Balut and Alex Atak guide listeners through the intricate web of evidence, investigative leads, and personal testimonies that shape this compelling narrative.

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Background of the Copernic Bombing

On October 3, 1980, a devastating bomb detonation occurred outside a synagogue on Copernic Street in Paris. The explosion resulted in the tragic loss of four lives and left dozens injured. Initial police investigations were hampered by limited evidence, leading authorities to pursue leads that shifted focus towards Middle Eastern groups, diverging from earlier theories focusing on far-right factions.

Community Impact

The synagogue community struggled to regain a sense of normalcy amid heightened security and pervasive fear. Pascal, a young member of the congregation, vividly recounts the long-term psychological toll:

Pascal (Mark Trevedik): "I was young, but many people have died. My father died 10 years ago already. So ultimately, for them, all of this remained unpunished, and they didn't get any reparation for their trauma."
(07:11)

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Revival of the Investigation

Nearly 30 years after the bombing, in 2007, a new investigative judge, Mark Trevedik, took up the case. Known for his persistence and innovative approaches, Trevedik sought to uncover new evidence that had long been overlooked.

Initial Discoveries

Trevedik discovered an intelligence report from the early 1980s attributed the attack to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – Special Operations (PFLP-OS), an offshoot of the PFLP. To provide context, historian Saverio Leopardi explains:

Saverio Leopardi: "The PFLP became renowned internationally because of this spectacular tactic of hijacking planes... Any action is justifiable if in their eyes, it advances the cause of Palestinian nationalism."
(12:03)

This revelation pointed investigators towards Hassan Diab, whose identity surfaced in a 1999 intelligence report listing potential suspects.

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The Hassan Diab Connection

Trevedik's breakthrough came with a photocopy of a passport belonging to Hassan Diab, discovered during an arrest in Rome in 1981. Significant findings included:

• Photograph Comparison: The passport photo closely matched police sketches of the suspected bomber.
• Travel Records: Entry and exit stamps aligned with the bombing timeline.

Further investigations revealed that Hassan Diab, residing in Ottawa as a sociology professor, had obtained a PhD from Syracuse University in the early 1990s. Handwriting analysis matched Diab’s PhD application with the hotel card used by the perpetrator.

Additional Evidence

A 1988 interrogation record of Yusuf El Khalil, a Lebanese financier, linked Diab to the PFLP-OS through personal associations. However, attempts to contact Khalil for further insights were unsuccessful, as he ascended to the role of Lebanon’s Finance Minister, limiting access to potentially crucial testimonies.

Mark Trevedik: "The main problem for investigating judge in antiterrorism is that you are working with intelligence services, but they cannot tell you their sources. So you can try to think about that, you can try to have some clue, but they are not going to tell you. It's classified."
(16:51)

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Presentation to Victims' Families

In 2008, Trevedik met with the families of the bombing victims, including Oren Shagriya, whose mother, Elisa, perished in the attack. This meeting marked a significant moment for the families, who had long awaited closure.

Oren Shagriya: "He was very, very detailed. He was very impressive... determined to track down the attackers. For us, the families, I guess it was wow, because we haven't heard anything for so many years."
(23:13)

Trevedik presented the evidence implicating Diab, a revelation that was both surprising and distressing for the victims' families.

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The Double-Edged Sword of Justice

As Trevedik pressed forward with his case, he grappled with the ethical complexities of pursuing justice decades after the crime. Balancing the victims' need for closure with the presumption of innocence underscored the tension inherent in the investigation.

Mark Trevedik: "When you are an investigating judge, you are working for the victims... you must also keep your distance because you are a judge and okay, okay, but I'm not going to give you a guy, a convicted man, because you need a convicted man. You say, I want to be sure that the guy is guilty."
(22:17)

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Confronting the Accusation

The episode culminates with Trevedik’s official request to extradite Hassan Diab to France for trial, based on circumstantial evidence amassed over nearly three decades. However, this move sets the stage for a dramatic confrontation between Diab and the French investigators.

During their visit to Diab’s residence in Ottawa, the tension reaches a peak as authorities prepare to detain him, leading to an emotionally charged scene:

Ann Maddox: "Anybody who knows him will know what. A decent, caring and peaceful person he is. Really peaceful, and would never ever commit a crime like this."
(25:10)

This moment encapsulates the central question of the series: Is Hassan Diab guilty, or is he a scapegoat? The juxtaposition of Diab’s professed innocence against the mounting evidence presents a complex moral dilemma about justice and the potential for wrongful accusation.

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Conclusion and Teasers for the Future

Episode 2 lays the groundwork for understanding the depths of the investigation and the multifaceted nature of justice. It raises critical questions about the reliability of intelligence sources, the passage of time in solving crimes, and the human cost of seeking closure.

The episode closes with an anticipation of further developments in the case, promising listeners a continuation of this riveting investigation in subsequent episodes.

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Notable Quotes

• Amanda Lifford (Promotion): "Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend."
• Pascal (Mark Trevedik): "I knew my classmates just wouldn't understand."
• Saverio Leopardi: "Any action is justifiable if in their eyes, it advances the cause of Palestinian nationalism."
• Mark Trevedik: "When you are an investigating judge, you are working for the victims... you must also keep your distance."
• Oren Shagriya: "This was astonishing for us. I mean, that something like this can happen at all."
• Ann Maddox: "A decent, caring and peaceful person he is. Really peaceful, and would never ever commit a crime like this."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 2 of "The Copernic Affair" masterfully intertwines investigative rigor with personal narratives, offering listeners a comprehensive view of a case fraught with historical baggage and ethical quandaries. Through meticulous research and compelling storytelling, Canadaland invites audiences to ponder the true meaning of justice and the lengths to which one might go to achieve it.

For those intrigued by the complexities of international investigations and the human stories behind them, this episode serves as a captivating exploration of "The Copernic Affair."

Transcript

[Ann Maddox]

Canadaland, funded by you.

[Giles Whittell]

Hello, it's Giles Whittell from Tortoise.

[Amanda Lifford]

Welcome to the news meeting. I think the danger here is that we're not as relentless as we were the first time around. We have to keep that up.

[Ann Maddox]

Just One newspaper found 30,000 thousand lies or falsehoods or misleading statements during his last term. Trump met the moment here. Because traditional media is in crisis, we should be talking about how our reporting is getting into the hands of people and how we're building trust with those audiences.

[Amanda Lifford]

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hello.

[Ann Maddox]

Welcome to We Signed an NDA, our podcast where we talk about the people who sign NDAs.

[Amanda Lifford]

Hollywood is the North Pole and the celebrities are Santa.

[Ann Maddox]

This is a show all about the elves, so please don't sue us, Santa.

[Amanda Lifford]

My name is Amanda Lifford.

[Ann Maddox]

If my voice sounds at all familiar, it's probably from the Vile Files podcast. And my name is Ann Maddox. You may have seen me on Vanderpump Rules. Getting fired on national television by Tom Sandoval.

[Amanda Lifford]

The Glasgow Willy Wonka experience.

[Giles Whittell]

One of the worst jobs in history.

[Ann Maddox]

Kirsty, you're on the right podcast.

[Amanda Lifford]

I was wearing snow pants lying under Stephen Colbert.

[Ann Maddox]

Welcome.

[Amanda Lifford]

I've heard of Vanderpump Rules. I don't know what it is, so listen to.

[Ann Maddox]

We signed an NDA. Wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Amanda Lifford]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal.

[Ann Maddox]

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

[Amanda Lifford]

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Staying on top of Canadian news does not have to be boring. Canadaland is a podcast that brings you the news differently. Our reporters break original news stories that you won't hear anywhere else. And our hosts and guests have funny and smart conversations about what is happening in Canadian politics and media. We're living through an era of heightened anxiety and fear. This prime minister is not worth the cost. Crime and corruption. I am not a KGB agent. Listen to Canadaland wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ann Maddox]

Last time on the Copernic Affair, my.

[Oren Shagriya]

Mother told my brother that she will just go to the Fruit store on Copernic street to bring some figs. But this was the last time my brother saw her.

[Ann Maddox]

On October 3, 1980, a bomb was detonated outside a synagogue in Paris.

[Mark Trevedik]

To the war zone. People running, people crying, blood all over corpses.

[Ann Maddox]

Four people were killed, dozens injured. With very little to go on, the police began chasing whatever leads they could find. They said that he was a guy who spoke good French, but the way that they described him, he was kind of Middle Eastern. That was when the direction of the investigation started turning away from the far right and towards the Middle East. Despite this new information, the investigation hit a dead end. And for years, there was no progress in the case of the Copernic street bombing. It looked like whoever had done this had gotten away with it, and things stayed that way for decades.

[Giles Whittell]

I'm Alex Atak.

[Ann Maddox]

I'm Dana Balut from Canadaland.

[Giles Whittell]

This is the Copenhagen affair. The night of the attack on Copenik Street, Rabbi Michael Williams was interviewed by a TV station. He had a clear message to the perpetrators of the he says, we're not afraid. And tomorrow we'll come back to pray in the synagogue. Tomorrow morning and next week and every week forever, we're not afraid. The rabbi kept his word. In the days after the attack, he held his services as usual amongst the piles of rubble and glass from the synagogue's shattered ceiling. Three weeks later, Pascal, who was there on the night of the bombing, came back for his bar mitzvah.

[Ann Maddox]

Things were different, more tense. The community arranged extra security and searched people at the doors on the way in. Everyone had to be much more vigilant. The congregation tried to rebuild a sense of normalcy. But for Pascal, carrying on like normal was impossible. He was having flashbacks to the night of the bombing. He went back to school, but didn't talk about it with anybody. He knew his classmates just wouldn't understand. Pascal's parents tried to help him process what had happened. But as a parent, how do you do that when you don't even understand it yourself? Part of the reason the adults around him couldn't comprehend what happened was because nobody was charged for the attack.

[Giles Whittell]

As the years passed, it felt like nobody would be held accountable for the explosion at the Copernic synagogue, as though the case had slipped from the back burner and into oblivion, never to be solved. I was young, he says, but many people have died. My father died 10 years ago already. So ultimately, for them, all of this remained unpunished, and they didn't get any reparation for their trauma. But in 2007, nearly 30 years after the bombing, a new investigative judge at the High Court Anti Terrorism Unit in Paris picked up the case.

[Mark Trevedik]

Yeah, my name is Trevedick. It's difficult to spell in English. T, R, E, V, I, D, I, C. Mark. Actually, I am a French judge.

[Ann Maddox]

Mark Trevedik was a hard man to pin down. We spent months going back and forth with him, trying to convince him to sit down for an interview.

[Mark Trevedik]

I really refused a lot of interviews about this case because it was too touchy.

[Ann Maddox]

He was reluctant, but eventually we came to an agreement. He would talk to us on one specific he would not answer any questions about the evidence in the case. We took what we could get.

[Giles Whittell]

Unlike judges in the us, Canada or the uk. In France, the role of an investigating judge is to interview witnesses and gather evidence themselves.

[Mark Trevedik]

It's not really easy to explain, but of course, it's a product of French history.

[Giles Whittell]

Then they make a call on whether or not there's enough evidence to proceed with the trial. What they don't do is decide whether or not somebody is guilty or innocent. And these judges are revered in France. There are even TV dramas about them. It's a big job reserved for the most respected investigators in the country, who generally take on the highest profile cases.

[Ann Maddox]

Was this like a dream of yours to get this kind of position?

[Mark Trevedik]

No, not a dream, no. I had many dreams, but not that sort of dream. No, no, no, no. You accept to do a job and after it's interesting and you are inside your job, under pressure, etc. You don't think, I'm going to do something else? No, you are.

[Ann Maddox]

Dream job or not, this role brought a lot of attention to Mark Trevdick and he seemed to revel in the spotlight. At the end of a TV interview in 2016, he even hopped on stage with a house band and belted out a Velvet Underground cover.

[Giles Whittell]

Sweet J.

[Mark Trevedik]

Oh, yeah, of course. I think we all need something to forget our job.

[Ann Maddox]

Mark Trevoric was an effective investigative judge and he was ambitious. His work took him all over the world, but he told me he was particularly drawn to the Middle East.

[Mark Trevedik]

It was very interesting for me because I was always attracted by those countries, Middle east, etc. I did a lot of travel in these countries.

[Ann Maddox]

Interesting. What was it that attracted you to these countries?

[Mark Trevedik]

It's difficult to say. I say at the beginning it was only a romantic attraction. You see, like when you read Lawrence of Arabia, it's a long time ago, you see, it's not like that anymore. And I learned Arabian language. I have some capabilities, and I was attracted by that.

[Giles Whittell]

By the 2000s, his decades of experience had earned Mark Trevorick a reputation as a stubborn investigator who could find new ways to interpret old evidence. He told us that when he got the job, he was handed around 80 cases.

[Mark Trevedik]

So I look at the cases, too.

[Giles Whittell]

Many to take on all at once.

[Mark Trevedik]

The difficulty for me was to decide which case I'm going to read first.

[Giles Whittell]

He prioritized cases that had the best chance of leading to an arrest, of resulting in some kind of justice or closure for the victims.

[Mark Trevedik]

I chose to work the old cases where people were died. You see the problem that if it's an old case, if you wait too long, it's going to be a really cold case.

[Giles Whittell]

When he was assigned the Copernic case, there was a lot of material waiting for him in the file, starting with, as we learned in our last episode, the French police's best working theory, that the group behind this attack was from somewhere in the Middle East. And when Mark Trevdick picked up the file, he saw something even more specific. It was a tip from the early 1980s from an intelligence report citing unnamed sources who claimed to know who was behind the bombing. A Palestinian militant group called the pflpos, which broke off from a bigger faction called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or the PFLP. To understand the PFLPOs, we spoke with Saverio Leopardi, who teaches international history of the Middle east at the University of Padua in Italy.

[Mark Trevedik]

I've been researching on the history of the Palestinian national movement for about 10 years, even more.

[Giles Whittell]

And we asked him about these two groups, the PFLP and the PFLP OS.

[Mark Trevedik]

How much time do you have? I'll try to be as brief as possible.

[Giles Whittell]

He explained that the PFLP was formed in 1967 to fight for Palestinian liberation and against Israeli occupation. The group carried out attacks across the Middle east and Europe, some of which were deadly. And one of their missions was to find new ways to draw attention to their cause.

[Mark Trevedik]

The PFLP became renowned internationally because of this spectacular tactic of hijacking planes. And actually their state of the goal was to bring the war attention over the Palestinian cause.

[Ann Maddox]

By hijacking that plane, we can tell those people that there's a war, there's a cause here in the Middle East.

[Giles Whittell]

The most famous of these hijackings was in September 1970. The PFLP hijacked five planes from across Europe and managed to redirect three of them to a desert airstrip in Jordan.

[Ann Maddox]

Responsibility for the hijackings was claimed by.

[Amanda Lifford]

The pilot Popular Front for the Liberation.

[Giles Whittell]

Of Palestine, a relatively small organization with strong Marxist leaning. After a week long ordeal, one hijacker was killed, but none of the passengers were hurt and the spectacle made headlines around the world. The PFLP contains people who believe virtually.

[Ann Maddox]

Any action is justifiable if in their.

[Giles Whittell]

Eyes, it advances the cause of Palestinian nationalism.

[Ann Maddox]

In a way, they got what they wanted. The world now knew about the pflp, but as the years went on, a rift began to spread within the group as the leadership disagreed more and more about these kinds of performative tactics. Some believe they forced Western media to pay attention to the Palestinian plight, that they were a good thing. But others thought these tactics were a distraction and did more harm than good. So the PFLP began to splinter and one of those offshoots was called the PFLPOs. OS standing for Special Operations in French. According to the intelligence report Mark Trevoric had found in the Kopernik dossier, it was this splinter group, the PFL pos, that was responsible for the attack on Copeland Extreme. Saverio Leopardi said the group acted independently, adopting tactics that their parent group did not condone. Basically, they went rogue.

[Mark Trevedik]

It had not many operatives and enacted independently.

[Giles Whittell]

When you say not many, I mean, how many? Are we talking, like a hundred or something?

[Mark Trevedik]

Because the workers really sell, so they don't really need huge numbers to carry out these kind of attacks.

[Amanda Lifford]

I'm guessing that most of the Canadians listening to this right now already listen to Canadaland, the Americans. I'm not so sure. For over 10 years, Canada land has been publishing weekly episodes that look critically at the media, break news stories, and bring listeners like you perspectives from across Canada that you won't find anywhere else. Angel, since you started working on the show, have you been listening? Have you been catching up in all things across the medicine line? People are always telling me that you Canadians are nice, polite, boring folks. But I've been listening to some news stories and holy cow, the stereotypes are wrong. You guys are wild. Heard stories about medical coverups, election interference, right wing trolls, racism, messed up policing, and something called a poke a roo. Anyway, you guys are like the US but with less guns and a younger, better looking president or leader, whatever you call him. I've learned a lot. Yep, Canadians are just as awful and outrageous and messed up as Americans are. They just hide it better. I'm learning that, Robert, you can listen to and follow Canadaland anywhere you get your podcasts.

[Ann Maddox]

So back to the intelligence reports that Mark Trevorick was Looking at in the Kopernick case file, the first report may have pointed to the PFL pos, but it didn't name individuals. It wasn't until he dug further into the dossier that another intelligence report caught his eye. And this is the one piece of evidence that Mark Chavedick actually did bring up in our conversation. It was from 1999 and included a list of around 10 names of specific people who were suspects in the Copernic bombing.

[Mark Trevedik]

It was other information with names, previous information, and they say this guy has done that, this girl has done that, etc. Etc.

[Ann Maddox]

One of the names on this list was Hassan Diab.

[Giles Whittell]

We did get our hands on some of these reports and given how important this intelligence is to the case, I wish we could tell you more about it. But after a year of reporting, dozens of interviews and requests for government documents, the source of this information is still unclear. Even Mark Trevedyk barely knew anything about it.

[Mark Trevedik]

The main problem for investigating judge in antiterrorism is that you are working with intelligence services, but they cannot tell you their sources. So you can try to think about that, you can try to have some clue, but they are not going to tell you. It's classified.

[Giles Whittell]

But it didn't matter. The report had given him something to work with. Finally, a promising lead in this case after nearly three decades. And there was more evidence in this dossier that pointed to Hassan Diab, including a photocopy of a passport. In October 1981, a year after the attack on Copenik Street, Italian police arrested a man at the airport in Rome. His name was Ahmed Ben Mohammed and he had just landed on a flight from Beirut. The Italian authorities knew Ben Mohammed was a member of the PFLP OS and took him aside at the airport. When they searched him, they found a stash of passports. One of those passports belonged to a man called Hassan Diab. The French investigators didn't have the passport itself, just a photocopy of it.

[Ann Maddox]

Inside was a photo, of course, taken in the late 1960s to Trevudik. The picture bore an uncanny resemblance to the police sketches of the man who was suspected of carrying out the Kopernik attack. Importantly, there were entry and exit stamps in the passport showing travel in and out of Europe and the dates lined up with the weeks surrounding the bombing. So Mark Chavedic made some phone calls, leaned on some contacts in the FBI and Lebanese authorities, and eventually learned that the Hassan Diab identified in the passport had obtained a PhD from Syracuse University in New York in the early 1990s. And was now working as a sociology professor at a university in Ottawa, Canada. So he had an idea. Remember the police had a limited sample of the perpetrator's handwriting, five words from the hotel card he'd filled out shortly before committing the bomb attack. With the help of American authorities, Trevitic obtained a sample of Hassan Diab's handwriting from the PhD application and some immigration records. Trevoric had these documents analyzed against the handwriting from the hotel card. They were found to be a match.

[Giles Whittell]

And there was one more thing tucked away in a French police archive. More information that pointed to the Hassan Diab in Canada. It was a decades old police interrogation record. In 1988, a Lebanese man called Yusuf El Khalil was questioned by French police as part of a different investigation into potential terror threats. Nothing to do with the Copernic attack. Yusuf El Khalil told French authorities that he was close to the pflp in the 1980s. So the police officers took note of the names in his address book. One of the names on that list was Hassan Diablo. Yusuf Al Khalil told them Hassan was a friend of his from his university days in Beirut. And he said that Hassan Diab was involved in some fringe socialist group that was apparently linked to the pflp. So we hoped he might want to talk.

[Ann Maddox]

Hello?

[Giles Whittell]

Hi, is this Mr. Yusuf Al Khalil? Speaking, but no luck. Your name has come up quite a lot in the court documents and I was wondering if you might be open to speaking to us.

[Ann Maddox]

I'm not so sorry, I'm not.

[Giles Whittell]

I kept trying. It's just. Mr. Khalil, I think your testimony is very important in the case and we would love the opportunity to talk to you. But it was a definite no. You haven't. I know.

[Ann Maddox]

That was the last we heard from Yusuf Al Khalil, but he is now Lebanon's finance minister and we suspect that is why. Why or partly why he didn't want to talk to us. After some digging, we did manage to get a hold of the transcript of his 1988 interrogation and a testimony he gave decades later. Here's what these documents. Yusuf Al Khalil did know Hassan Diab for about a decade and he couldn't say for sure. But Hassan Ziab seemed sympathetic towards the PFLP at the time, but he had no proof he was ever directly involved with the group.

[Giles Whittell]

For Trevediq, a clearer picture of Hassan Diab was starting to emerge of a young university student from Lebanon who'd gotten involved with Marxist university politics, but who had violent ambitions, and who'd followed those ambitions into joining a militant group and helping plan and execute an attack outside the Copenik Synagogue in 1980. It wasn't a straight shot, but finally, after decades of dead ends and dropped leads, Mark Trevedi felt he had enough circumstantial evidence to implicate Hassan Diab in the Copenik synagogue bombing. So 28 years after the explosion and a year after he picked up the case, Mark Trevdick submitted a request to Canada's Justice Department to extradite Hassan Diab to France for further investigation and to bring him to trial.

[Ann Maddox]

When I was speaking to Mark Trevedick, he said, sure, a big part of his job is to bring people to justice. But justice is just a word. Sometimes it can feel abstract. The victims of the crime, though, they're real.

[Mark Trevedik]

When you are an investigating judge, you are working for the victims. It seems that for the victims, the bomb attack was yesterday, you see, because their life has changed forever. But you must also keep your distance because you are a judge and okay, okay, but I'm not going to give you a guy, a convicted man, because you need a convicted man. You say, I want to be sure that the guy is guilty.

[Giles Whittell]

In 2008, Mark Trevudik set up a meeting with some of the victims and their families. Oren Shagriya, whose mother Elisa was killed in the explosion, was one of them.

[Oren Shagriya]

I remember there was a sort of a gathering of the families with Trevudijk.

[Mark Trevedik]

I told them what I did during the past year and what I intend to do for the next year.

[Oren Shagriya]

He came in and basically told us, I mean, all the families together, about the case. He was very, very detailed. I should say he was for us, he was very impressive. He was young. He presented the case in a very impressive way, very convincing way. And he was, you know, determined to track down the attackers. So, you know, for us, the families, I guess it was wow, because as you said, we haven't heard anything for so many years.

[Giles Whittell]

At this meeting, Trevedi laid out everything he had so far that pointed to Hassan Diab. Was this the first time you'd heard the name Hassan Diab come up?

[Oren Shagriya]

Yes, yes. We haven't heard it before at all. This was astonishing for us. I mean, that something like this can happen at all. And in a way, we were also happy that they tracked down the guy who actually planted the bomb.

[Ann Maddox]

At this point, French investigators felt confident they could prove Hassan Diab was responsible for detonating the bomb outside the synagogue. But of course, there's Another version of this story. So one cold, snowy weekend a few months ago. So we are almost at Hassan's house. I traveled to Ottawa to meet Hassan Diab. Hi Hassan.

[Giles Whittell]

How are you doing guys?

[Mark Trevedik]

Sorry I missed your calls.

[Giles Whittell]

It looks like the telephone was upstairs.

[Mark Trevedik]

Oh, good.

[Ann Maddox]

And coming up on the Copernic Affair.

[Giles Whittell]

I see all this SWAT team like.

[Mark Trevedik]

You know, I kept looking at them.

[Giles Whittell]

In shock like, what's going on?

[Ann Maddox]

Anybody who knows him will know what.

[Mark Trevedik]

A decent, caring and peaceful person he is.

[Ann Maddox]

Really peaceful, and would never ever commit a crime like this. It came to a point where I just couldn't believe that people didn't understand that this was not the guy, but Hassan. Are you able to answer the question like yes or no? The Copernic Affair is a production of Canadalands in partnership with House of Many Windows. The series is written and produced by me, Dana Belut and Alex Aytak. Our editor is Julie Shapiro. Additional production by Noor Azdiye Additional research, production and translation support by Kathryn Bennett Sound design and mixing by Resonance Fields Audio Original music by the Tiebreakers. Our artwork is by Tony Wong. Our executive producers are Jesse Brown and Julie Shapiro, and Jesse Brown is Canadaland's publisher and editor. Special thanks this episode to Antonia Kerrigan and to Lauren Soubies at Leeds University School of Law who helped us understand the role of French investigative judges. If you can't wait to hear what happens next, become a [e-mail] join to listen to every episode of the Kopernick Affair early and ad free right now. You'll also be helping vital independent journalism along the way. You can also listen early and ad free by subscribing to Canadaland beyond channel, on Apple Podcasts or on Amazon Music included with Prime. Thank you for listening. If you want to help, the best thing you can do is spread the word, let people know about this show, share it on social and encourage people to support work like ours. Thanks so much for listening.

[Amanda Lifford]

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's gonna get personal.

[Ann Maddox]

I don't know who sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

[Amanda Lifford]

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

[Giles Whittell]

Hello, it's Giles Whittell from Tortoise.

[Amanda Lifford]

Welcome to the news meeting. I think the danger here is that we're not as relentless as we were the first time around. We have to keep that up.

[Ann Maddox]

Just One newspaper found 30,000 thousand lies or falsehoods or misleading statements during his last term. You know, Trump met the moment here because traditional media is in crisis. We should be talking about how our reporting is getting into the hands of people and how we're building trust with those audience ACAST Powers the World's Best.

[Amanda Lifford]

Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.

[Ann Maddox]

Hi, I'm Pace Case.

[Giles Whittell]

And I'm Bachelor Clues.

[Ann Maddox]

We host Game of Roses, the world's best reality TV podcast. We're covering every show on reality TV at the highest level possible. We analyze the Bachelor, Love is Blind, Perfect Match, Vanderpump, and anything else you find yourself watching with wine and popcorn. We break down errors, highlight plays, MVPs, and all the competitive elements that make reality TV a sport. And we interview superstar players like Bachelor at Kaitlyn Bristow and Big Brother champion Taylor Hale. If you want to know so much about reality TV, you can turn any casual conversation into a PhD level dissertation. You definitely want to check out Game of Roses.

[Amanda Lifford]

ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Ann Maddox]

Acast.com.