BEIRUT – After more than 40 years of arbitrary detention, a French court on Thursday ordered the conditional release of George Abdallah, 74, a Lebanese left-wing activist who is being held in France on charges of assassinating an Israeli diplomat and an American in 1982.
The verdict was the pinnacle of a long legal and political struggle brought by Abdallah supporters and played a critical role in the decision to release him.
Abdallah praised the role in a meeting in his cell with French radical left MP Andre Tourein at the Lannemesan prison in southern France, saying “the reason for his release is a comprehensive dynamic mobilization of men and women overseas.”
Based on French judicial decisions, Abdallah (arrested in 1984), considered one of France’s longest-serving prisoners, will be released on July 25th.
Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean Louis Challenget, said the court upheld the conditional release ruling and would require Abdallah to leave France immediately if the French authorities (the West or specifically the US) do not place any new obstacles to implementing the decision.
It is noteworthy that the Israeli Embassy in Paris has expressed “remorse” about the French judicial decision, claiming Georges Abdallah is “a terrorist in charge of the murder of Israeli diplomat Jaakov Barr in front of his wife and daughter, and American Diporamat Charles Ray.”
“These terrorists, free world enemies, should spend their lives in prison,” the embassy of the occupation added.
Abdallah repeatedly refused to characterize what happened as a “terrorist act” during the 1978 invasion of Southern Lebanon, and instead put it together with an act of “resistance.”
Meanwhile, Hannah Galib, the director-general of the Lebanese Communist Party, warned that “the possibility of assassinating Georges Abdallah after he arrived in Lebanon,” and emphasized that “the Lebanese state is responsible for his protection.”
Other observers attributed the reason to Paris’ refusal to allow Georges Abdallah to give speeches criticizing the brutal and bloody imperialist policies from the French soil. According to Western Logic, heroes are “anti-Semitic” and not heroes if they dislike “Israel” and their bloody policies. What is needed is a preemptive step to prevent the liberated from delivering a revolutionary speech from the heart of Paris by moving Abdullah directly to Beirut, and is portrayed in international newspaper headlines as a revolutionary hero who criticised Western imperialist policies that support Israel’s wildness and thus won after 40 years of crackdown.
The people behind the decision to imprison Georges Abdallah for over 40 years are convinced that they are heroes who are unable to “discipline” heroes who reject colonialism in both words and deeds, and that colonialism is not destiny, but a generation that will establish a generation that learns that all people can do.
Hezbollah noted that the 41 years spent by Georges Abdallah in French prisons constituted a terrible accusation of “the state of law, justice, freedom and human rights protection,” and placed it in the category of blind faith towards the interests of Washington and Tel Aviv.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was born in 1951. In 1970 he joined the Palestinian class of resistance defending the Lebanese and Palestinians, carrying out accurate operations against Israeli enemies.
In 1984 he was arrested in the city of Lyon, France and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1986 he was sentenced to another four years in prison. He met the legal requirements for his release in 1999, but pressure from the US and Israeli people prevented him from being released.
In historical mythology, historians tend to describe heroes with elaborate artistic plots. The job of documenting the lives of modern heroes is more complicated. Among them is Georges Abdallah. He led his cellular resistance for over 40 years without shaking. He was a man of immobilized revolutionary principles and foundations in a time when failure was widespread, common and tyrannical.