French justice ordered Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, one of the oldest prisoners in France after 40 years in prison on Thursday. The Lebanese Palestinian activist imprisoned in Lannemezan (Hautes-Pyrénées) was sentenced in 1986 for the assassination of Israeli and Palestinian diplomats in Paris.
At 74, he spent more than half of his life behind bars. Georges Abdallah, imprisoned in France since 1984 for the assassination of Israeli and Palestinian diplomats in Paris, will be released on July 25 after 40 years in prison, we learned Thursday, July 17 from a judicial source.
The decision was rendered by the Paris Court of Appeal, during a non-public hearing at the Paris courthouse, in the absence of the main interested party, imprisoned at the Lannemezan prison center (Hautes-Pyrénées).
One of the oldest prisoners in France
It has been 25 years since the former chief of a Propaletinian Lebanese group can be released. All his requests – ten – of released released had been refused, until today.
The political activist was sentenced for the first time in 1986 in Lyon to four years in prison for criminal association and detention of weapons and explosives. He was then tried the following year by the Paris Special Assize Court for complicity in the assassination in 1982 of two diplomats, the American Charles Ray and the Israeli Yacov Barsamentov, and the attempted assassination of a third in 1984.
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A bloody course
Born April 2, 1951 in Koubayat (northern Lebanon) in a Christian family Maronite, this man with a clear gaze and with a drunk beard militates at 15 in the Syrian People’s Party, a favorable training in a “great Syria” including Lebanon and Palestine. Having become a teacher, he founded, with members of his family, the Lebanese revolutionary armed fractions (Farl), a group responsible for five attacks, including four mortals between 1981-1982, in France.
His bloody career ends in unprecedented conditions: on October 24, 1984, he entered a Lyon police station, asking to be protected from the Mossad killers which he said in his footsteps. He then holds an Algerian passport, after having Maltese, Moroccan and Yemeni passports, useful for his many trips (Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Cyprus …).
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“A fighter, not a criminal”
But the DST quickly understands that the perfect French man is not a simple tourist. In one of its apartments in Paris, we also discover an arsenal including machine-guns and emitting and emitting posts.
In front of the judges who pronounced his sorrows, he always defended himself: “The route I followed was commanded by human rights abuses perpetrated against Palestine”. He also hammered being “a fighter, not a criminal”.
Become “political prisoner”
Over the years, his fate moved and mobilizes activists close to the French Communist Party and the extreme left, who accuse successive governments of relentlessness and consider him “a political prisoner”.
Communist municipalities even make him honorary citizen and, regularly, demonstrations take place before his prison. Today, he can still count on the support of a handful of faithful demonstrators each year before his prison or some leftist parliamentarians.
Ex-public enemy n ° 1
Georges Abdallah was in the 80s the public enemy No. 1 and one of the most famous prisoners in France. He has long been accused, wrongly, of being behind the wave of attacks of 1985-86 which had left 13 dead including seven at the Tati store on rue de Rennes. The real officials, pro-Iranians, had been identified two months after the sentence to the perpetuity of Georges Abdallah.
The latter has always denied any involvement in the assassinations of diplomats in Paris, but has always described them as “acts of resistance” against “Israeli and American oppression”, in the context of the Lebanese civil war and the Israeli invasion in South Lebanon in 1978. He has always refused to deny his convictions.
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“A past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”
His group of the Farl (Lebanese revolutionary armed fractions) has been dissolved for a long time and “has not committed violent action since 1984,” said the Court in its February judgment, saying that Georges Abdallah “now represents a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”.
The details of its release on July 25 are not yet known. According to several sources interviewed before the hearing, it is planned that it will be taken by the police at Tarbes airport towards Roissy, where he will take a flight for Beirut. Lebanon, which has claimed its release from the French authorities for years, had written at the Court of Appeal to confirm that it would take charge of the organization of its return home.
