Valentine Chapuis / AFP
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah photograhié in his prison cell in Lannemezan, in the southwest of France, on July 17, 2025, after a court of appeal ordered his release.
Justice – It’s D -Day, after 40 years of incarceration. The Lebanese activist Propaletinian Georges Ibrahim Abdallah indeed left from Lannemezan prison (Hautes-Pyrénées) this Friday, July 25. After being transferred to Roissy airport, his plane transporting him to Beirut indeed landed this Friday at 2:30 p.m.
Members of the family of the Propalestinian activist and the team who supported him were waiting for him in the airport honor. Dozens of his supporters, some brandishing Palestinian flags or the Lebanese Communist Party, gathered near the arrivals hall, according to an AFP correspondent on site.
“It is both a joy for him, an emotional shock and a political victory after all this time”told AFP during the night his lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset after his release from prison. “He should have come out so long ago”.
A non -suspensive appeal of the prosecution
The Paris Court of Appeal ordered its release last week, “From July 25”provided that it leaves French territory and no longer returns to it. 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 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.”
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah must now go to his native village of Kobayat, in northern Lebanon, where “A popular and official welcome will be reserved for him” 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”had assured the inmate.
“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 Marxist Christians, dissolved for a long time, has “No 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 he considers as enemies”the judges considered that Georges Abdallah, who wants “Finish his days” In his village, perhaps by engaging in local politics, no longer represents the 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 group had struck five times in France, killing two diplomats in 1982, an American lieutenant-colonel and the one who was considered the head of Israeli Mossad in France.
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”.
