Activists Slam French Judiciary as 'Farce' as Abdallah Denied Parole Anew

The French judiciary on Thursday dismissed a ninth parole request submitted by detained leftist Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who has been in jail since 30 years.

At a protest outside the French embassy in Beirut, a spokesman for the International Campaign for the Release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah said the activists were notified by the prisoner's lawyer that the parole was rejected.

“France has wrapped up the farce of the French judiciary that is subservient to the American administration, declaring that the freedom fighter Abdallah is a hostage in its custody,” the spokesman, Bassam al-Kantar, said.

“We tell all Palestinian resistance factions that Georges Abdallah struggled for Palestine and pointed his rifle at the Israeli and American occupations. We demand his release in any swap deal with the Zionist occupation,” Kantar added.

“We tell the resistance in Lebanon (Hizbullah) that Georges Abdallah must be on the top of your priorities,” he went on to say.

Kantar vowed that the campaign will keep “condemning every French citizen on Lebanon's soil.”

“We tell the French ambassador that they will face further protests against their interests. To the newly nominated ambassador we say: France's accreditation papers must be the return of Georges Abdallah on your plane,” Kantar underlined.

“Until when will France keep appearing in an insolent image? Until when will PM (Tammam) Salam keep declining to meet us?” he lamented.

In response to a question, the activist noted that the legal mechanism to secure Abdallah's release has become “dead.”

“He now has to wait for two and a half years to appear before another judicial panel to submit a new parole request,” Kantar explained.

“France is openly telling us: as long as there is an atmosphere of terrorist crimes in France (Charlie Hebdo attacks), it is impossible to free Abdallah,” he revealed.

Rejecting any correlation between the two cases, Kantar described the alleged mix-up as a “sin.”

“You exported terrorism to us but Abdallah remains the resistance fighter who pointed his rifle at one chest – the Zionist occupation,” he added.

The protesters also called on the Lebanese government to “stop buttering up to France,” denouncing the French weapons that will be delivered to Lebanon as part of the $3 billion Saudi grant.

In 2013, a French court annulled a parole granted to Abdallah, after postponing its final decision several times.

Abdallah has been eligible for parole since 1999, but eight previous applications were all rejected.

On January 28, 2014, U.S. congresswoman Grace Meng had urged France not to release Abdallah.

"We cannot stand idly by while an ally frees the murderer of another American in diplomatic service," said Meng, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Meng said the life sentence was "necessary."

Abdallah, the former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction (LARF), was arrested in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison three years later for his alleged involvement in the 1982 murders of U.S. military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.

Y.R.

M.T.