The demonstration to free George-Ibrahim Abdallah, banned in Béziers by the prefect of Hérault, authorized by the courts

Three organizations (LFI, Cultures Solidaires and POI) declared a gathering, in Béziers this Thursday, November 14, to demand “the release of a Franco-Palestinian activist, George Abdallah, presented as a political prisoner in connection with the current campaign of numerous organizations, to denounce the ongoing massacres in Palestine, but also in Lebanon.”

Fear of overflow

The gathering was banned by the prefect of Hérault François-Xavier Lauch, by a decree of November 13 that the three organizations wanted to have suspended before the administrative court. “The reasons given are similar to those used almost routinely by the prefecture – in particular the particularly sensitive departmental, international and national context, or the fact that an isolated individual committed, on August 24, an attack near the Beith Yaacov synagogue and publicly denounced by Free Thought or the mobilization of the police within the framework of the JOP 2024. The judge of the administrative court of Montpellier is again seized to preserve the fundamental freedom to demonstrate which the prefect systematically undermines without seriously demonstrating that the demonstrations planned for November 14, 2024, any more than the previous ones, whether static or not, would constitute a threat to public order.” This Thursday, November 14, the administrative court of Montpellier annulled the order prohibiting the demonstration in Béziers which was therefore authorized.

The oldest political prisoner in France

George-Ibrahim Abdallah is detained in Lannemezan prison, in the Hautes Pyrénées. He was convicted in 1986 of complicity in the assassination of an American diplomat and an Israeli. Events which took place in Paris in 1982. George-Ibrahim Abdallah was born in Lebanon in 1951. He was considered in France as the leader of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fraction. Conditionally released since 1999, all of his requests were rejected on the grounds that the person concerned has never repented of his actions and that he refuses to compensate the families of the two victims. In October, he began his fortieth year of detention in France, which makes him the oldest political detainee. Some very high-ranking politicians assume “keep him in detention at the request of American intelligence services.” In 2013, his release, once accepted on the condition of his expulsion from French territory, was finally rejected.