Paris (AFP) – A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the 1982 killings of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said. The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.
“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said. But his release remains conditional on the outcome of the appeal by prosecutors, to be heard at a hearing on a date yet to be set.
Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov. Washington, a civil party to the case, has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.
– ‘Legal and political victory’ –
Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release. He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France. However, the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.
The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”. “It’s not surprising that the prosecution is appealing, since they want him to die in prison,” he added.
– Veteran inmate –
One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions. Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s. It is banned as a terror group by the US and EU. Then in the late 1970s, Abdallah, a Christian, founded his own militant group, the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). It made contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).
A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deadly attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail. At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years prosecutors had called for. His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.
There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”. On Thursday, around 200 people gathered ahead of the ruling in the southwestern city of Toulouse, 120 kilometers (75 miles) from the Lannemezan prison in the French Pyrenees where Abdallah is held. On 26 October, a much larger demonstration of 2,000 people was held outside the prison to mark the 40th anniversary of his arrest.
© 2024 AFP
