Lebanese militant Georges Abdallah to be released from French prison after four decades
"It's both a judicial victory and a political scandal," said his lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset, who maintains that his client has spent the longest time in prison for acts related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. French government officials have described him as a terrorist.
Abdallah, 73, was sentenced to life in 1987 for complicity in the 1982 murders in Paris of US military attache Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov, and the attempted murder of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984.
His lawyer said he is scheduled to fly to Beirut on July 25, escorted by French officers.
The former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade, which was an offshoot of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999. However he remained incarcerated despite filing 11 requests.
But in November, a Paris court granted his release on condition that he leaves France and does not return. It said that Abdallah had been irreproachable in prison and posed "no serious risk to renew terrorism acts".
The office of France's anti-terrorism prosecutor appealed against the decision, automatically keeping him in prison. The appeals hearing took place on December 19 and judges were due to give their ruling in February but the decision was postponed to July.
Mr Chalanset said that Abdallah wants to return to his home village of Qoubaiyat in north Lebanon to end his life there peacefully. Abdallah, a self-proclaimed Marxist, has always described himself as a 'fighter' who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a 'criminal'. Lebanese authorities describe him as a "political prisoner".
The United States is reported to have pressured France to block Abdallah's release. In January 2013, his eighth request to be freed was successful, but the Interior Ministry then refused to validate his expulsion from France. It has been reported that Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, had called prime minister Laurent Fabius to ask for him to not be released.
Again, in November 2024, the US Department of Justice wrote to French judges to oppose his upcoming hearing, saying that his return to Lebanon would represent a threat to public order and highlighting that Abdallah had refused to repudiate the killings.
His lawyer has criticised US arguments, pointing out that the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade no longer exists and no acts have been carried out by it in Europe or the US since 1984.
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