George Ibrahim Abdallah’s release from prison on July 25th is conditional. He leaves France and never returns.
A French court ordered the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Palestinian Lebanese fighter who had been jailed for 40 years for his role in the murder of two diplomats in France in the early 1980s.
The Paris Court of Appeals ordered Thursday that 74-year-old Abudallah, on July 25th, be released from the South of France prison on the condition that he would never return.
The former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade was sentenced to life in prison for accomplice in 1987 in an attempt to kill US military Akkar Adzia Charles Robert Ray in Paris, Israeli diplomat Yakov Barsimantov, and 1984 President General Robert Mum of Strasbourg in 1987.
First detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987, Abdallah is one of France’s longest serving prisoners, as most prisoners serving life sentences within 30 years were released.
The detainee’s brother, Robert Abdallah, told Lebanon’s AFP news agency on Thursday that he was overjoyed by the news.
“We are delighted. We didn’t expect the French judiciary to make such a decision or to be released, especially after many requests for release failed,” he was quoted as saying. “Once upon a time, French authorities were released from Israeli and the US pressure.”
Abdallah’s lawyer Jean Louis Charancet welcomed the decision, “it was both a judicial victory and a political scandal that he had not been released before.”
Abdallah will be deported to Lebanon.
The prosecutor can file an appeal with the court of Cassation, the French Supreme Court, but it is not expected to be processed quickly enough to halt his release next week.
Abdallah has been released for 25 years, but the United States – the civil party in this case – has consistently opposed his removal prison. Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said Abdallah should be released from prison and wrote to the Court of Appeals, saying they would organize his return to Beirut.
In November, a French court ordered his release on the condition that Abdallah leaves France.
However, French prosecutors appealed the decision, claiming that he had not changed his political views, and as a result, it was stopped.
The verdict was supposed to have been delivered in February, but the Paris Court of Appeals postponed it. It said it is unclear whether there is evidence that Abdallah paid compensation to the plaintiffs.
The court reviewed the latest demand for his release last month.
At the Closed Door hearing, Charancet told the judge that 16,000 euros ($18,535) would be placed in prisoners’ bank accounts and that civil parties would be at their disposal in cases involving the US.
Having never expressed regret over his actions, Abdallah has always argued that he was a “fighter” who fought against the rights of the Palestinians, not the “criminal.”
A Paris court explained that he could not condemn his actions in prison, saying in November there was “no serious risk in terms of committing new terrorist acts.”
Abdallah enjoys some support from several French public figures, including members of the Congressional Left and Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Elnaugs, but most are forgotten by the general public.
