This is D -Day for one of the oldest prisoners in France: the Lebanese activist Propaletinian Georges Abdallah, sentenced in the 1980s for complicity in assassinations of American and Israeli diplomats, left prison on Friday after more than 40 years behind bars in France, to return to his country.
At the blows of 3:40 am, a convoy of six vehicles including two black vans and the car of the prefect of Hautes-Pyrénées set off from the Penitentiary Center of Lannemezan, lit light on, noted an AFP team without being able to see the militant with the now white beard.
Contacted, prefecture and Ministry of the Interior were unable to confirm the presence of the former Lebanese teacher on board.
Once out of prison, Georges Abdallah, 74, must be brought to Tarbes airport, said a source in the police, where an airplane will take him to Roissy to take a flight to Beirut.
“It is both a joy for him, an emotional shock and a political victory after all this time,” his lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset told AFP after the convoy, without being able to confirm the presence of Mr. Abdallah in one of the vans. “He should have come out so long ago.”
The Paris Court of Appeal ordered its release last week, “from July 25”, provided that it leaves French territory and no longer returns. He had been liberable since 1999 but had seen his ten requests until then failed.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office announced on Monday a cassation appeal against the liberation decision. This appeal, which will not be examined for several weeks, is not suspensive and will therefore not prevent the departure of Georges Abdallah from France.
According to Me Chalanset, who saw him one last time in his prison on Thursday, “he seemed very happy with his next release, even if he knows that he arrives in the Middle East in an extremely heavy context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations”.
The lawyer must now, he says, “warn those who await him on Saturday in Beirut” because Georges Abdallah should rally his native country one day earlier than expected.
– “Small suitcase” –
In recent days, Georges Abdallah has therefore emptied his cell, decorated with a red flag of Che Guevara and overflowing with piles of newspapers and books, which he entrusted to his small support committee, some of which were still in front of the prison on Thursday afternoon.
He also gave the majority of his clothes to fellow prisoners, and has only “a small suitcase”, testified his lawyer.
His relatives hope that he will be welcomed at the “Honor of Honor” at Beirut Airport. They asked for authorization to the Lebanese authorities, who have claimed for years from France the liberation of Georges Abdallah.
The latter will then go to his native village of Kobayat (northern Lebanon), where “a popular and official welcome will be reserved” according to his family.
AFP met him on the day of the decision, in his cell, by accompanying a parliamentarian. “Forty years is a lot, but we don’t feel them when there is a dynamic of struggle,” said the prisoner.
– “past symbol” –
The duration of his detention is “disproportionate” compared to the crimes committed and in view of the age of the former Farl chief (Lebanese revolutionary armed fractions), judged the magistrates of the Court of Appeal.
This group of Lebanese Christians Marxist, dissolved for a long time, has “not committed violent action since 1984”, also recalled the court, seeing in Georges Abdallah a “past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”.
While regretting that he has not “evolved” nor expressed “regret or compassion for the victims whom he considers as enemies”, the judges considered that Georges Abdallah, who wants to “end his days” in his village, perhaps by committing to local politics, no longer represents risk of public order disorder.
At the time of the facts, in the context of the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion in South Lebanon in 1978, the Farl were the interests of Israel and its American ally abroad.
Before the arrest of Georges Abdallah in 1984, the Groupuscule had struck five times in France, killing two diplomats in 1982: the American lieutenant-colonel Charles Ray, then the Israeli Yacov Barsimantov, considered the manager of the Mossad in France, shot down by a woman in front of his wife and two children.
Identified by his fingerprints discovered in a hideout full of explosives and weapons, the pistol of which had been used by the two assassinations, Georges Abdallah had appeared alone at the courthouse in 1987, in a particular context: he had become the public enemy number 1 and the most famous prisoner in France because we were wrongly believed behind the wave of 1985-86 attacks and installed the psychosis in the 1985-86 The streets of Paris. He had been sentenced to life.
The former teacher has all these years denied his involvement in the assassination of diplomats, while refusing to condemn “acts of resistance” against “Israeli and American oppression”.
