Sentenced to life imprisonment for the complicity of assassinations in 1987, the man saw ten of his requests for liberation fail. Justice must again decide on its fate this Thursday, July 17.
With more than forty years in prison to his credit, he is one of the oldest prisoners in France. Sentenced in 1987 to life imprisonment, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has since made ten requests for release, all rejected. The Paris Court of Appeal must again decide on its fate, this Thursday, July 17 in the morning, after yet another request.
“I told the judges ‘either you free him, or you condemn him to death’, launched to the press Me Jean-Louis Chalanset, his lawyer, at the exit from the audience on June 19.
If justice finally reaches his request, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah will return to Lebanon immediately after her release.
Sentenced to life in 1987
This Lebanese, suspected of being the head in Europe of Lebanese revolutionary armed fractions (FARL), a group of Lebanese Christians Pro-Palestinian Marxists, was arrested in Lyon in October 1984 and placed in pre-trial detention.
He was then suspected of being an accomplice of the assassinations of two diplomats, the American Charles Robert Ray and the Israeli Yacov Barsimantov, killed in 1982 in Paris. In 1985, weapons and explosives were discovered in an apartment he rents, including a pistol that served in the double murder.
Judged for the first time in 1986 for associations of criminals “,” detention of weapons and explosives “and” use of false documents “, the man is first sentenced to four years of detention. The year after, during his trial for complicity in assassinations, he was sentenced to life imprisonment this time, while the prosecution had required a penalty” which is not more than 10 years “.
His conviction comes in a particular context, while France is shaken by a wave of fatal attacks.
A “disproportionate” imprisonment duration
From 1999, when he was entitled to request his release, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah multiplies requests. All are rejected … with the exception of one, on appeal, in 2013, accepted on one condition: that man is the subject of an expulsion order towards Lebanon. Once again, the hope of being released moves away, the Minister of the Interior of the time, Manuel Valls, taking no decree in this direction.
In 2022, the detainee then turned to another body asking the administrative court to order his expulsion from the French soil. This time, it is justice that refuses, arguing that it is not able to give such an order to the Ministry of the Interior.
Finally, on November 15, 2024, the penalties court gave its green light after a new request, recognizing a “disproportionate” imprisonment period with regard to the acts committed and its current dangerousness “. Lebanon says it is ready to welcome it after its release from prison.
Everything seems to be back to normal. It was without counting on the national anti-terrorist prosecution, which decided to appeal this decision, with the argument that the United States, civil parties at the 1987 trial, still oppose its release.
“Past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”
In the 1980s, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah had become the public enemy n ° 1. Not because of his business, but because it was long believed to be the source of the wave of attacks from 1985-86 in which 13 people died, including seven at the Tati store on rue de Rennes in Paris. Attacks that had installed a psychosis in the streets of the capital. The real officials, pro-Iranians, had been identified two months after the perpetuity of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Even today, the man benefits from the support of demonstrators who regularly mobilize in front of the Lannemezan penitentiary center (Pyrénées-Atlantiques), where he is imprisoned. Monday evening, several dozen people gathered again to request his release, says AFP.
He can also count on some supporters to the left of the political spectrum, like the deputy Éric Coquerel who, last February, posted photos from the prisoner’s cell in Lannemezan. “Fraternal meeting between political activists,” he wrote in this publication.
The fate of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, now 74, is once again suspended from the decision of the courts. If the Paris Court of Appeal gives its green light this Thursday, a military aircraft will come and seek it in Tarbes in the morning, in the direction of Roissy, explains its lawyer in BFMTV. An airliner will then lead him to Beirut.
