Until recently, Hassan Diab’s life in Ottawa had begun to settle back into a quiet suburban routine: spending his days teaching sociology part time at Carleton University, taking his two youngest children to the park to play football, or going for an afternoon swim.

It had been well over a year since he was convicted in absentia for carrying out a deadly bomb attack on a Paris synagogue in 1980, and the media attention had largely quieted down. He was trying to move on with his life.

Diab, who is Lebanese Canadian, has consistently maintained his innocence, claiming he was in Beirut sitting university exams at the time of the bombing.

But in January, a new voice weighed into his case, returning it to the headlines. Elon Musk reposted an X post about Diab by Pierre Poilievre, leader of the country’s federal Conservative party. Musk added a remark: “A mass murderer is living free as a professor in Canada?” More than 21 million people saw the post.

Diab’s lawyer, Don Bayne, has long argued that the (Israeli) intelligence used to identify him is unreliable, saying: “It’s unknown sources. Unknown circumstances. Who said what? When? Is this a human source? Is this just something some analyst made up? We have no idea.”