It’s a decision that will go down in history. The Lebanese Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, considered by some as the “ oldest prisoner in the world linked to the Middle East conflict », must find freedom after forty years behind bars in France.
The verdict fell this Friday, November 15. The sentence enforcement court accepted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s eleventh request for conditional release, said the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (Pnat), which announced an appeal. “ By decision dated today, the sentence enforcement court admitted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah to the benefit of conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition of leaving the national territory and no longer appearing there. », Specifies the anti-terrorism prosecution.
The Lebanese communist activist, former teacher, ardent defender of the Palestinian cause, had been for forty years behind the walls of Lannemezan prison, in the southwest of France. Under prison number 2388/A221, he was considered the longest-serving “political prisoner” in Europe, incarcerated for complicity in assassination, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1986.
“ I’m happy already. Even if the prosecution appeals, obviously. It is already a political and judicial victory », Reacted on RFI his lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset. “ As he is the oldest prisoner in the world linked to the Middle East conflict, I think the Court of Appeal will have the same reading as the tribunal. It’s a death sentence otherwise. »
“ I just heard the news, but isn’t the prosecution already in the process of appealing? », Declared to RFI, visibly moved, the Nobel Prize for Literature Annie Ernaux, support for the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. “ It’s great because I’ve been following the story, the journey of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah for several years, and I see to what extent there is a denial of justice and that each time, his request for release was rejected for completely political reasons. It’s France, but also the United States. So, I feel an extraordinary feeling of liberation. Me too, in a way. And I hope for what he wants, which is to return to Lebanon. I am still under the influence and at the same time I am afraid, indeed, that once again an obstacle will be decided by the French government, under influence I would say, in the context which is ours, Palestine, Gaza, under bombs and considered. I mean, we still see her as the enemy, it’s scary. »
Complicity in assassination
Aged 33 on October 24, 1984, the Lebanese Christian activist, formerly of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), entered a police station in the city of Lyon to ask for protection from what he thought were agents Mossad on his trail. In reality, it was French agents who were following him, because at the time he was occupying an apartment in the name of an individual arrested in Italy with six kilos of explosives.
Despite his Algerian passport, the Territorial Surveillance Directorate (DST) noticed that he was the co-founder of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Fractions, a small Marxist group which considers that it is necessary to carry out armed actions abroad against Israel and the UNITED STATES. The FARL claimed responsibility for five attacks, four of which were fatal, in 1981-1982 in France. It is the time of a new Israeli offensive in Lebanon.
Georges Abdallah was arrested in 1984 for possession of weapons and use of false papers. In 1985, a Frenchman was taken hostage in Tripoli, Lebanon, by the revolutionary group. A deal is then put in place between Algiers and Paris: the release of Georges Abdallah in exchange for that of the Frenchman Gilles Sidney. But the market will never see the light of day and only the French national will be released. Because weapons were discovered at the Lebanese activist’s home in Paris, the same weapons that killed two diplomats in 1982 in Paris: the American Charles Ray and the Israeli Yacov Barsimantov, who turned out to be agents of the CIA and Mossad .
He was then sentenced, in 1987, to life imprisonment, with a security sentence of fifteen years, after being found guilty of complicity in murder in Paris. The climate in which the trial takes place is particularly stormy: Paris is hit by a wave of attacks and hostage-taking in Lebanon which, we will learn later, are not the work of the FARL but of small pro-Iranian groups . Also, from 1986, the trial of terrorist crimes falls to the Assize Court, specially composed of professional magistrates and not jurors from civil society. The trial of the Lebanese activist will be the first in this special court.
A case full of secrets and lies
Imprisoned since his arrest in October 1984, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah had been free since 1999, but all his requests for conditional release had been rejected, on the grounds that he never expressed regret for the crimes he committed. always denied. Except one, in 2013, accepted on condition that he was subject to an expulsion order. But the Minister of the Interior at the time, Manuel Valls, did not sign this decree, therefore making his release impossible even though the Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, visiting Paris, had personally requested the French authorities for the release of this compatriot whom he described as a “political prisoner”. Nelson Mandelaone of the world’s most famous political prisoners, was behind bars for 27 years and 190 days.
For forty years, numerous testimonies, not only coming from the defense of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, had surfaced on this extraordinary affair. Jacques Vergès, his lawyer at the time, by producing documents from the American State Department, denounced: “ It is the United States government that imposes an intolerable veto on his release. » The hand of the United States was pointed several times to explain the blockage of the release procedure. From the beginning, Washington followed the investigation carried out in Paris very closely, to the point of becoming a civil party, and the actors in the legal world or in the fight against terrorism, in their memoirs, all today report having suffered pressures in this matter. Like Yves Bonnet, former boss of the French secret services (DST), who now spoke of state revenge against Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, orchestrated by the Americans.
Thus, it would be them who put pressure on France to pronounce such a sentence at the time. WikiLeaks would later reveal that, in fact, the United States pushed, even forced, the authorities to keep the Lebanese activist in prison. In 2007, one example among many revealed by diplomatic cables, the State Department stated: “ The United States government expresses its firm opposition to the possibility of conditional release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. »
Punishment incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights
Also, a month after the verdict, in March 1987, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah’s first lawyer published a book in which he admitted to being a mole for French intelligence. But the trial has not yet been reviewed. For his defenders, the Lebanese activist was a scapegoat victim of reasons of state. A political prisoner. A term used by supporters of Georges Abdallah and which is still used today by many lawyers. “ But he disappeared because in the law, we no longer want to have political prisonersexplained in 2022 on RFI Antoine Mégie, specialist in anti-terrorist justice. In the 1980s, with the repeal of the death penalty, but also this end of political crimes, it was considered that in France no one was a political prisoner. Yes, from a legal point of view, there are no more political prisoners in France, but it is obvious that justice and its interaction with politics remain predominant in the treatment of what we will call terrorism. But this qualification of terrorist is, here too, extremely fluid. This affair became the symbol of the political prisoner even though attempts were being made to depoliticize it. »
In 2021, the European Court of Human Rights considered that sentences of life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole only after forty years of incarceration, were incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. Others wondered: why Georges Abdallah is still in prison when the assassin of the former Iranian Prime Minister Chapour Bakhtiar was released less than twenty years after the events, that the members of Direct Action or the Red Brigades or ETA have never languished in prison for so long.
“ I find it abnormal and scandalous to still keep Georges Ibrahim Abdallah in prison, already declared in 2012 Yves Bonnet. I consider that he had the right to claim the acts committed by the FARL as acts of resistance. Afterwards, we can disagree, that’s another debate. But we must remember the context, too, of massacres of Sabra and Chatilah whose culprits were never punished. And today, France keeps this man behind bars even though it has released Maurice Papon*? »
On Monday, October 7, the French justice system examined this eleventh request for conditional release in the presence of Georges Abdallah, now 73 years old, his lawyer, counsel for the United States, civil party, and two representatives of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office ( Pnat). The two Pnat prosecutors had “ strongly opposed » upon his release, “that they tried to link to Hamas and Hezbollah (…) to say that he would represent a danger if he were released », Confided at the end of the hearing Mr. Chalanset. The request for conditional release was accompanied by a request for expulsion to Lebanon of the activist who fears for his safety if he were to remain in France.
The oldest political prisoner in Europe, his case had not been mentioned in the media or in legal or political circles for a long time. However, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah was the political prisoner receiving the most mail in prison. From his 9 m² cell, he continued to campaign in favor of the Palestinian cause. Activism is the meaning of his life.
Every October 26 for fourteen years, thousands of sympathizers met in front of the gates of Lannemezan prison to demand his release and numerous signs were regularly brandished in demonstrations against the war in Palestine and in Lebanon, two countries in which he is a symbol of resistance and struggle for the emancipation of peoples.
* Former senior Vichy official sentenced to 10 years in prison for crimes against humanity, for having participated in the deportation of hundreds of Jews to Auschwitz. He was finally released after three years in prison, due to his state of health.