French court orders release of Lebanese militant Georges Abdallah
A French court Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese
militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years after being
convicted over the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.
Abdallah was arrested in October 1984 and is the longest-held prisoner
in western Europe.
The court said Abdallah, who was detained in 1984 and convicted in
1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 on condition
that he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement, adding that they would appeal the release order.
"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.
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the 1982 murders of US military
attaché Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yakov Barsimentov in Paris, as
well as in an assassination attempt on Robert Homme, a US consul in
Strasbourg.
The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions claimed responsibility for the
two murders, saying they were carried out in retaliation for US and
Israeli involvement in the Lebanese civil war, which erupted in 1975, as
well as Israel's subsequent occupation of southern Lebanon, which began in 1982 and lasted until 2000
During his long incarceration, Abdallah has been supported by a
network of human rights groups, anti-imperialist, Marxist, and
anti-Zionist activists who have denounced what they consider the
judicial mistreatment of “a hostage of the French government”. They
compare him to a more celebrated former political prisoner: Nelson
Mandela of South Africa.
‘A legal and a political victory’
The US has consistently opposed Abdallah’s release, but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.
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 his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when
he was granted release on the condition that he would be 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".
Longtime inmate shines spotlight on French justice system
Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.
Wounded
in 1978 during Israel's invasion of Lebanon, he joined the
Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),
which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s
and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.
In the late 1970s, Abdallah, a Christian, founded his own militant
group the LARF, which had contact with other radical 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 demanded by prosecutors.
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"."L'Humanité " is a communist media.
