Justice orders the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah

This was his eleventh request for parole. After forty years in prison, Lebanese communist activist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah finally saw his request accepted by the Sentencing Court on November 15. This decision, which undoubtedly constitutes a victory for the law, was however worth this comment from the activist, in an interview given the day before to Humanity : “My release is a detail. Faced with the situation in the world, the repeated attacks against the rights of peoples and their freedom. » In this exclusive interview, he also commented: “If I am released, in their eyes, it would represent a victory for Israel's opponents. »

Immediately, the national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (Pnat) announced an 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. », Details the Pnat in a press release.

Defender of Palestinian rights, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has been available for release since 1999. A teacher in the Bekaa plain, from a Maronite Christian family, the activist became close in his youth to the Arab Nationalist Movement (MNA) and the Popular Liberation Front of Palestine (PFLP) before participating in the creation of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions (FARL), a communist and anti-imperialist organization.

Justice under orders

In the midst of the civil war in Lebanon and while the Israeli invasion raged, he was sent to France when, in 1982, the assassination of the deputy military attaché of the United States embassy in Paris occurred. A few months later, an Israeli diplomat was also assassinated. At the same time, several executives of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were also assassinated in Paris without the justice system being as zealous.

In October 1984, when he thought he was being hunted by Mossad agents and the Israeli intelligence services were pursuing him, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah took refuge in a police station in Lyon to ask for protection. They are in reality French agents.

The Department of Territorial Surveillance (DST) noticed that he was the co-founder of the FARL, which at the time claimed responsibility for five attacks, including four fatalities, in France. He was arrested and then sentenced in 1986 to four years in prison for possession of a weapon and use of false documents. Despite his denials, he was tried again on July 28, 1987 for complicity in assassination and sentenced to life imprisonment in the context of attacks by pro-Iranian groups in Paris.

Solidarity at work

In France and around the world, support committees are forming to demand his release. But American pressure on the French authorities, as well as the conviction of officials, such as the socialist Manuel Valls, when he occupied the Ministry of the Interior, are responsible for keeping Georges Ibrahim Abdallah in the shadows while a request for freedom is accepted in 2013. The affair is political.

Supporting the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, recently judged in our columns that the continued detention of the activist was characteristic of a French justice system under orders. “There are people like Raoul Salan, Maurice Challe who carried out a putsch in Algiers in 1961, who rose up against the French government and who were released (in 1968 and 1966 – Editor’s note). They did not die in prison, unlike what is being done for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.” In a context of destructive war in Gaza and Lebanon, supporters of freedom and Palestinian rights find in the demand for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah a reason to continue the fight.