Sentenced to life in prison for the murder of two diplomats, the “oldest political prisoner” in France will be released.
L’ex-“revolutionary” Lebanese Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for complicity in the assassination of two diplomats, will be released after having spent more than half of his life.
“I am a fighter, not a criminal”has always insisted on this man with clear eyes and a thick beard, who asked for his release for the 11th time, a request on which the courts ruled this Friday.
The sentencing court has accepted the eleventh request for conditional release of the Lebanese pro-Palestinian activist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, imprisoned for 40 years for complicity in murder and free since 1999, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (Pnat) told AFP ), who announced that he would appeal.
“By decision dated today, the sentence enforcement court admitted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah to the benefit of conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition of leaving the national territory and no longer appearing there”said the Pnat in a press release.
Born on April 2, 1951 in Koubayat (northern Lebanon), this Christian of the Greek Orthodox rite campaigned at the age of 15 in the Syrian People's Party, a formation favorable to a “Greater Syria” including Lebanon and Palestine. Wounded during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1978, he joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Georges Habache's communist and anti-imperialist movement.
Communist, anti-imperialist and pro-Palestinian
The taciturn teacher then founded, with his brothers and cousins, the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions (FARL). He already has contacts with movements considered terrorist: Direct Action (France), Red Brigades (Italy), the Venezuelan Carlos and Red Army Faction (Germany).
A small pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the FARL claims five attacks, including four fatalities in 1981-1982 in France.
The conditions of Abdallah's arrest are unprecedented in this matter. On October 24, 1984, he entered a police station in Lyon, asking to be protected from Mossad killers who he said were on his trail. He then held an Algerian passport, after having had Maltese, Moroccan and Yemeni passports, useful for his numerous travels (Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Cyprus…). But the DST quickly understands that the man with perfect French is not a tourist but Abdel Kader Saadi, “nom de guerre” of Abdullah. In one of his apartments in Paris, we discover an arsenal including submachine guns and transceiver stations.
Sentenced in 1986 in Lyon to four years in prison for criminal conspiracy and possession of weapons and explosives, he was 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 Barsimentov, and the attempted assassination of a third in 1984.
Abdallah denies, reaffirms that he is not “nothing but an Arab fighter” but is sentenced to life imprisonment, the attorney general having requested ten years of imprisonment.
In his memoirs, Me Georges Kiejman, lawyer for the civil parties, mentions an accused behaving “like the militant terrorist he said he wasn’t”. “He insulted everyone, called us 'pigs' and 'dirty imperialists', he had to be kicked out of the courtroom”.
His lawyer, Me Jacques Vergès, sees in the verdict “a declaration of war”. A support committee was immediately created, requesting its “immediate release”.
Having become one of the oldest prisoners in France, imprisoned in Lannemezan (South-West), he has never expressed the slightest regret. “He is doing well intellectually. He is an activist, he stands his ground, reads a lot and keeps himself very informed about what is happening in the Middle East. We write to him from all over the world”his lawyer Me Jean-Louis Chalanset told AFP in 2022.
Since 1999, the year he became eligible for release, all his requests for conditional release have been rejected except one, in 2013, but on condition that he be deported, which the then Minister of the Interior did not implement. , Manuel Valls.
“Political prisoner”
Over the years, his fate moved and mobilized activists close to the French Communist Party (PCF) and the far left, who accused successive governments of relentlessness and considered him to be “a political prisoner”. Communist municipalities even made him an honorary citizen and, regularly, demonstrations took place in front of his prison.
“Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is the victim of state justice that shames France”denounced in October in the daily Humanity the writer Annie Ernaux, 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature.
“Personally, I believe that Georges Ibrahim Abddallah could be released”estimated in 2021 Me Kiejman. “I have a form of respect for him” now and “the brawler of the assize court has become a thoughtful intellectual”even if, “locked in a respectable but dogmatic certainty, he does nothing to facilitate his release”.
