French court orders release of Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was serving a life sentence for complicity in the murders of two diplomats, one American and one Israeli, in Paris in 1982.
He has been imprisoned in France since his arrest in 1984.
The Paris Court of Appeal ruled Abdallah can be released next Friday on the condition that he leave France and never return, judicial authorities said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
24 minutes ago
- USA Today
EPA cuts its scientific research office, as layoffs set to take effect
The research and development office had been in the crosshairs of organizations allied with President Donald Trump. The Environmental Protection Agency eliminated its scientific research office in the Trump administration's latest cuts to the federal workforce. The change, announced July 18, affects the Office of Research and Development, which provided EPA with information to make decisions on standards for human health and the environment. EPA will now have a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, according to an agency news release. 'Under President Trump's leadership, EPA has taken a close look at our operations to ensure the agency is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback,' Lee Zeldin, the agency's administrator, said in a statement. 'This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars.' Officials said the creation of the applied science and environmental solutions office would allow EPA to prioritize research and science while putting it 'at the forefront of rulemakings and technical assistance to states.' EPA said organizational changes are saving nearly $750 million. The agency had already been subject to cuts in the new administration. A July 8 Supreme Court ruling allowed the Trump administration to implement sweeping reductions by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. In January, EPA had 16,155 employees, but the agency said it will now have 12,448 workers. It's unclear how many staff are affected by the July 18 announcement, while some will be reassigned in the agency. In an email, an EPA spokesperson said the next step would be sending notices to individual employees. The office includes biologists, chemists, epidemiologists and toxicologists. Scientists deal with emerging pollutants, including researching environmental emergencies such as floods, train derailments and wildfires, according to Nicole Cantello, legislative and political director for the American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents EPA workers. "EPA is hellbent on destroying the foremost environmental research organization in the world," Cantello said. "That will only result in dirty air, dirty water and more health risks for the American people." Justin Chen, the union president, said the research and development office also sets regulatory guidelines for measuring pollutant levels. The restructuring places scientific research closer to the administrator, a political appointee, who "you can very well see turning a blind eye on things that may be inconvenient to friends of the administration," Chen said. In March, Democrats on the House science committee said there were about 1,540 employees across the country in EPA's reorganization plan of the Office of Research and Development. Lawmakers warned the plans would eliminate the EPA research and development office staffing by about 50-75%. The New York Times first reported on the plans. 'The obliteration of (the Office of Research and Development) will have generational impacts on Americans' health and safety,' Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, the committee's ranking chair, said in a July 18 statement. 'This is a travesty.' The research and development office had been in the crosshairs of organizations allied with Trump, as the Times reported. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, specifically cited the EPA science office in Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump to reconfigure and downsize the federal government. Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Reach him by email at emcuevas1@ or on Signal at emcuevas.01.
The Hill
24 minutes ago
- The Hill
Hegseth reassigns first female Naval Academy head
Navy Vice Adm. Yvette Davids, the first female to serve as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy is being reassigned, the Defense Department announced Friday. Davids was instead tapped to serve as deputy chief of naval operations, plans, strategy and warfighting development, according to a press release. Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Michael J. Borgschulte was named to lead the Naval Academy in her place — making him the first Marine to lead the institution. 'The Naval Academy remains one of the most consequential institutions in American public life. It forges leaders of character, men and women of integrity, resilience, and intellect who will guide our Fleet and our Nation through the challenges of an increasingly contested world,' Secretary of the Navy John C. Phelan said in a statement. 'Lt. Gen. Borgschulte is uniquely prepared to lead the next generations of naval and marine officers and ensure they are ready for the future fight,' Phelan added. Superintendents at the Naval Academy are there for at least three years typically, but the stint can be shorter. Davids, a 1989 graduate of the academy in Annapolis, Md., had been the leader of the institution since January 2024. Her reassignment, which was first reported by USNI News, comes as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has overseen the shake-up of top military leaders. Trump removed Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr. in February and nominated Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan 'Razin' Caine, who was eventually confirmed by the Senate for the role. The administration also fired chief of naval operations Adm. Lisa M. Franchetti, who was the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Trump also removed Adm. Linda Fagan, the first female U.S. Coast Guard commandant. Phelan congratulated Davids on her appointment, adding that she commanded 'at every level and has led with distinction in some of the most complex security environments of our time.' 'Her strategic vision and operational depth will be an exceptional asset to the Navy and the Department of Defense,' Phelan said. Davids said in a statement that she was honored to be nominated to her new role. 'I look forward to continuing to serve alongside America's strongest warfighters,' she wrote.
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
They vanished in Syria's long occupation of Lebanon. Now their families want answers.
President Bashar Assad of Syria had just been toppled by a lightning rebel offensive. In the chaos, a news crew filming outside a Syrian prison captured the image of an older man, disheveled and dazed, emerging from its gates. The family froze. They were sure it was the missing son, Ali, and their story quickly made headlines. Advertisement But days passed. Then weeks. Ali never returned. Hope faded. Lebanese officials offered no answers. Journalists stopped calling. Months later, the search grinds on. 'We need to continue my mother's mission,' said Ali's brother Moammar, clutching an old photograph of him in the family's home in northern Lebanon. 'We still have hope he is alive.' After the collapse of the Assad government, prison doors across the country flew open, and Syrians flooded in to search for traces of their friends and loved ones who had disappeared in untold numbers under the brutal regime. In Lebanon, however, many could only watch and wait. Thousands of Lebanese had gone missing during Syria's decades-long occupation of their country, which lasted from 1976 to 2005, and many were believed to be imprisoned in Syria. For years, the tentacles of Assad's security state extended well beyond Syria's borders, ensnaring not only political opponents, but also ordinary civilians caught up in its machinery of suspicion. Dissidents, laborers, businesspeople — anyone could vanish. Advertisement The disappearances became a hallmark of Syria's rule, sometimes aided by pro-Syrian Lebanese factions, with men and women taken from their homes or snatched off streets. Behind the checkpoints, Damascus' secret police, known as the mukhabarat, ran detention sites across Lebanon — Beirut's luxury Beau Rivage Hotel became shorthand for torture — and routinely transported suspects across the border to prisons like Sednaya. When Assad was toppled, Lebanese officials estimated that more than 700 of their citizens were still imprisoned in Syria, but some advocacy groups say there are far more unaccounted for. So far, only nine have returned, many after languishing in prison for decades. Among them was Suheil Hamawi, who was taken from his home more than three decades ago. Standing on his balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, Hamawi, 61, took a drag from his cigarette and gazed at the crystal clear waters below. It was a lot to take in: He had not seen the sea in 33 years. 'These scenes — you can only repeat them in your mind, and in your dreams,' Hamawi said. 'I feel like I can breathe again.' A member of a Lebanese Christian political party opposed to the Syrian occupation, Hamawi was abducted from his family home in 1992 by Syrian intelligence officers and taken across the border. His capture was so abrupt that for the first 17 years, his wife believed he had simply vanished. His son, Georges, was only 10 months old at the time. When Hamawi returned home, Georges was 33 and had a son of his own. Advertisement Hamawi spent the days and weeks after his release sipping cups of cardamom-infused coffee and video-calling relatives, many of their faces now unrecognizable to him. 'Do you remember my children?' said a cousin over the phone, sitting alongside her adult daughter. 'When I left her, she was so small,' Hamawi said in disbelief. Former Lebanese prisoners interviewed by The New York Times described brutal treatment and torture, which they said was often more severe on account of their nationality. Families of those missing said they had received no help from Lebanese authorities while Assad was in power, and had often been forced to spend thousands of dollars on bribes to Syrian security forces to get a sign of life from their relatives or win their release. Bounced around the Assad regime's network of prisons, Hamawi was first detained in Palestine Branch in Damascus, and later in the notorious Sednaya. He spent the first five years in solitary confinement in a cell about 30 inches wide and 6 1/2 feet high. He described it as 'a tomb with a door.' 'There was no light at all,' he said. 'We used to recognize day from night by the sound of birds, or from the type of food they used to give us.' In Sednaya, Hamawi grew close with his cellmates. They had been stripped of their names and given numbers — his was 55 — but that did not stop them from forging quiet bonds. Most did not live to see the fall of the Assad regime, he said. Advertisement One Syrian friend, a journalist, disappeared after being told by guards that he had a visitor, only for Hamawi to find out 10 years later that he had been executed. Another close friend, Fahed, a fellow Lebanese, refused treatment after becoming seriously ill, preferring to die than endure another day. 'He was stronger than me,' Hamawi said. 'He accepted death, and I couldn't.' In recent months, Syria's new rulers established a commission to investigate the fates of those who disappeared as part of a broader push for transitional justice. In Lebanon, where Syria's shadow still looms, families of the missing have been fighting a parallel battle for decades, pressing for accountability and answers. But the Assad regime wielded outsize influence over Lebanon, refusing to shed light on the fate of the vanished, and Lebanese officials were often unable — or unwilling — to press the issue. For Abir Abou Zeki, whose father was among the disappeared, it has been a lifelong fight. It was June 12, 1987, when her father, Khalil, walked into her bedroom in a home just south of Beirut and planted a soft kiss on her cheek for the last time. The family of five was set to begin new lives in Germany. Their passports were ready. So were their plane tickets. But Khalil had to make one last business trip into Syria to collect spare truck parts for the company he worked for. When days went by and he did not return in time for their flight, panic set in. They eventually learned he had been arrested because he had a coffee tin containing American dollars, a criminal offense under the Assad regime. Advertisement Then he disappeared. In the months that followed, their family fell apart. Abou Zeki's mother, Dalal, walked out, unable to cope with the stress of raising three children alone. Their dreams of a new life had been shattered almost overnight. For years, members of Lebanon's Druze community, a close-knit religious minority to which the family belongs, rallied around the family. Relatives and local officials made repeated appeals to Syrian authorities. 'The only answer was: 'Yes, he is in our prisons. Consider him ours and don't ask about him anymore,'' Abou Zeki said. Years later, the message hardened: 'Consider him dead,' she recalled. When Assad was toppled in December, Abou Zeki, like so many others, allowed herself a flicker of hope — though it came tangled with guilt and fear. 'I think it's selfish of me to say that I want him to be alive after all that torture,' she said. 'But we suffered a lot. We used to feel guilty if we were eating or drinking -- because he wasn't able to. We felt warm while he was cold.' 'I think it's easier to know that he died,' she said quietly. Others are hoping wholeheartedly. In the Ali family's crumbling home in northern Lebanon, Moammar clutched the portrait of his brother Ali, taken when he was still a young man. As their mother once did, he was saving up for a trip across the border, hoping to find answers. From the window, Syria was visible in the distance. Somewhere out there, they still believed, Ali is alive, waiting to be found. 'A mother's feeling is never wrong,' Moammar said. This article originally appeared in Advertisement
