The Palestinian Authority has arrested a key suspect in an antisemitic attack on a Jewish restaurant in Paris in which six people were killed in 1982, French prosecutors said on Friday.

The arrest of Hicham Harb, now 70, has not been reported by the PA’s official news agency.

The attack, in which six people were killed and 22 injured, was the deadliest antisemitic atrocity in France since World War II.

The six suspected attackers are believed to have been members of the Palestinian terror group Abu Nidal at the time. Three of them are not known to have been detained.

Harb is suspected of leading the attackers in the gun assault on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in Paris’s Marais district, a historically Jewish quarter. He has been the subject of an international arrest warrant for 10 years.

The surprise announcement came as France gears up to formally recognize a Palestinian state at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, a move that has been welcomed by the Palestinian Authority but bitterly denounced by Israel.

The office of the French anti-terror prosecutor said it was informed by Interpol of Harb’s arrest and welcomed “this major procedural breakthrough.” It thanked the Palestinian authorities for their cooperation.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the announcement, saying the suspect had been arrested in the West Bank.

“I welcome the excellent cooperation with the Palestinian Authority,” he said on X. “We are working together to ensure his swift extradition.”

“This is another step forward for justice and truth. My thoughts are with all the families who have endured the pain of waiting for so long.”

The attack began around midday when a grenade was tossed into the dining room of the Parisian eatery.

The attackers then entered the restaurant, which had around 50 customers inside, and opened fire with Wz-63 Polish-made machine guns. They also shot at passers-by as they escaped.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said he had met with the families of the 28 victims to inform them of the latest developments.

“I have emphasized our determination to see that justice is done,” he said on X.

He said Harb’s arrest was “the result of the process” initiated by Macron, adding that the recognition of the Palestinian state would enable France to request the suspect’s extradition.

Harb’s extradition “will allow the criminal court to conduct a full examination of the facts and get as close as possible to the truth about who was responsible for this attack,” Romain Boulet, one of the lawyers representing the families of the victims, told AFP.

Harb, whose real name is Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, is suspected of having been a gunman and supervised the attack.

French authorities announced in 2015 — nearly 33 years after the attack — that international arrest warrants had been issued for Harb and five other suspects. In July, a French judge ordered a trial for them.

One of the defendants, Hazza Taha, was detained recently in Paris. Another defendant, Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, 66, had emigrated with his family to Norway and was extradited to France in 2020.

Abu Zayed’s lawyers, Bruno Gendrin and Romain Ruiz, said they see the arrest of Harb as proof that the investigation was not complete.”

“As usual, the anti-terrorism courts wanted to rush things and we are now seeing the consequences,” they told AFP in a statement. They plan to request the reopening of the judicial investigation.

Three other suspects in the 1982 attack are still thought to be at large.

Two of them are believed to be in either the Palestinian territories or Jordan: Nabil Hassan Mahmoud Othmane, also known as Ibrahim Hamza, and Nizar Tawfiq Moussa Hamada, also known as Hani. Another suspect, Mohamed Souhair al-Abassi, also known as Amjad Atta, is in Jordan, where authorities have refused to extradite him.

The six suspects are thought to have been members of Abu Nidal, a terror group named for its late leader, whose real name was Sabri al-Banna.

The group has been blamed for nearly two dozen attacks that left at least 275 people dead, including assaults on El Al Israel Airlines ticket counters at the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985, in which 18 people were killed.

Abu Nidal himself was found dead in his Baghdad apartment in August 2002. Iraqi authorities said he died by suicide.