Lebanese schoolteacher back home after 40 years in French jail

Kobayat, Lebanon: One of France’s longest-held inmates, the pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant and former schoolteacher Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, arrived in his hometown on Friday, having been released after more than 40 years behind bars for the killings of two diplomats.

AFP journalists saw a convoy leaving the Lannemezan prison in southwest France, and hours later, the 74-year-old was placed on a plane and deported back to Lebanon, to be welcomed by family members on his return to Beirut at the airport’s VIP lounge.

Back in his hometown of Kobayat, near the Syrian border in north Lebanon, hundreds of men, women and children gathered to welcome Abdallah.

“Whether or not we agree with his ideas… we first and foremost salute the man,” lawmaker Jimmy Jabbour, who is from the area, told AFP, hailing Abdallah’s “perseverance”.

“The whole village is happy that he’s back… 41 years in prison, others would have probably lost their minds,” said Kobayat resident Claudette Tannous, 68.

Earlier at Beirut airport, an AFP correspondent said dozens of supporters, some waving Palestinian or Lebanese Communist Party flags, gathered near the arrivals hall to give him a hero’s reception.

In his first public address after being released, Abdallah took aim at Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, where human rights organisations have warned of mass starvation.

“The children of Palestine are dying of hunger while millions of Arabs watch,” he said. “Resistance must continue and intensify,” added the former schoolteacher.

There was no official comment on his return from the Lebanese government.

Abdallah was detained in 1984 and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris.

– ‘Past symbol’ –

The Paris Court of Appeal had ordered his release “effective July 25” on the condition that he leave French territory and never return.

While he had been eligible for release since 1999, his previous requests were denied with the United States — a civil party to the case — consistently opposing his leaving prison.

Inmates serving life sentences in France are typically freed after fewer than 30 years.

Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, visited him for a final time on Thursday.

“He seemed very happy about his upcoming release, even though he knows he is returning to the Middle East in an extremely tough context for Lebanese and Palestinian populations,” Chalanset told AFP.

The charge d’affaires of the Lebanese Embassy in Paris, Ziad Taan, who saw Georges Abdallah before his departure, told AFP that he was “well, in good health, very happy to return to Lebanon to his family and to regain his freedom”.

AFP visited Abdallah last week after the court’s release decision, accompanying a lawmaker to the detention centre.

The founder of the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions (FARL) — a long-disbanded Marxist anti-Israel group — said for more than four decades he had continued to be a “militant with a struggle”.

After his arrest in 1984, French police discovered submachine guns and transceiver stations in one of his Paris apartments.

The appeals court in February noted that the FARL “had not committed a violent action since 1984” and that Abdallah “today represented a past symbol of the Palestinian struggle”.

The appeals judges also found the length of his detention “disproportionate” to his crimes, and pointed to his age.