Lebanese pro-Palestine activist to be freed after 40 years in French jail
A French appeals court has ordered the release of Lebanese pro-Palestine activist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah after four decades in prison.
The former guerrilla with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for his alleged involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov five years earlier.
On Thursday, the Paris Appeals Court ordered the 74-year-old to be freed from prison next week, on 25 July, on the condition that he leaves French territory and never returns.
Abdallah is one of the longest-serving prisoners in France, where most convicts serving life sentences are freed after fewer than 30 years.
He had appealed against his conviction 11 times since becoming eligible for release in 1999.
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The United States - a civil party to the case - has consistently opposed his release, whereas Lebanese authorities have worked for his liberation and told the court they would organise his return home.
Abdallah, born to a Christian family in the village of Kobayat, northern Lebanon, has long maintained that he was not a "criminal" but "a fighter" who battled for the rights of Palestinians.
"The path I followed was dictated by the human rights violations perpetrated against Palestine," he told the judges during his last appeal for release.
Wounded in 1978 during Israel's invasion of Lebanon, Abdallah, a secondary school teacher, joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a series of plane hijackings during the 1960s and 1970s.
A year later, along with his brothers and cousins, he founded his own pro-Palestine armed group, the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF).
The group had contact with other far-left armed outfits, including France's Action Directe, Italy's Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).
The Lebanese anti-Israeli Marxist group claimed responsibility for five attacks, including four in France in 1981 and 1982.
'Freed from Israeli and US pressures'
Abdallah's brother, Robert, told AFP in Lebanon that relatives were "delighted” with his release.
“I didn't expect the French judiciary to make such a decision, nor for him to ever be freed, especially after so many failed requests for release," Robert said.
"For once, the French authorities have freed themselves from Israeli and US pressures," he added.
Prosecutors can file an appeal with France's highest court, the Court of Cassation, but it is not expected to be processed fast enough to halt his release next week.
Abdallah's lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, also welcomed the decision as "both a judicial victory, and a political scandal that he was not released earlier".
In November last year, a French court had ordered Abdallah’s release, conditional on his leaving France.
But France's anti-terror prosecutors, arguing that Abdallah had not changed his political views, appealed against the decision, which was consequently suspended.
The activist has never expressed regret for his actions.
During this 11th request, the sentencing court, then the appeals court, ruled in favour of Abdallah's release, considering the length of his detention "disproportionate" to the crimes committed, and deeming that at 74, this "elderly" detainee aspiring to end his days in his village in northern Lebanon no longer presented a risk of disturbing public order.
A verdict was due to have been delivered in February, but the Paris appeals court postponed its decision until 19 June so that Abdallah "could justify compensation to the civil parties", including the US.
He had always refused to do so, arguing his innocence and considering himself a political prisoner.
However, at the June hearing, Abdallah's lawyer told the judges that €16,000 had been placed on the prisoner's bank account and were at the disposal of civil parties in the case.
Over the years, Abdallah's fate has mobilised leftist activists, who have accused successive French governments of preventing his release.
Several communist municipalities have made him an honorary citizen, and protests have frequently been held outside his prison in Lannemezan, in southwestern France.
"Georges Ibrahim Abdallah is the victim of a state justice that shames France," Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux said in the communist daily L'Humanite in October.
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