France to free terrorist who murdered Israeli, US diplomats

French court orders Lebanese terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, who murdered American and Israeli diplomats, to be released despite his life sentence.

By World Israel News Staff

A Lebanese terrorist responsible for the murders of two diplomats, including an Israeli and an American, will be released from prison despite being sentenced to life in prison, a French court has ruled.

On Thursday, the Paris Court of Appeal held a closed-door session on a petition by Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the founder of the terrorist group known as the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF), requesting parole.

Abdallah, a 74-year-old Maronite Christian and far-left activist, served with a Palestinian terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in the late 1970s, following Operation Litani, the week-long Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon in 1978.

In 1979, Abdallah established LARF and was involved in a string of terror attacks in France targeting American and Israeli officials.

In January 1982, Abdallah gunned down Charles Robert Ray, an American military attaché, in Paris.

A second attack, carried out by a LARF terrorist in a Paris suburb in 1982, killed Yaacov Barsimantov, second secretary of the Israeli embassy in France.

Two years later, LARF attempted to assassinate an American diplomat in Strasbourg.

After the botched Strasbourg assassination, police discovered a weapons depot in Paris set up by Abdallah. In October of that year, he was arrested and indicted for the attacks.

In 1987, a French court sentenced Abdallah to life in prison.

However, 12 years after his sentencing and 15 years after his arrest, Abdallah became eligible for parole under French law.

While his two initial requests were denied in 1999 and 2001, in 2003 a court initially granted Abdallah’s request, though the decision was ultimately reversed following objections from the United States and the French justice minister.

Last November, a court accepted a new petition for Abdallah’s parole, tentatively slating his release for December.

However, appeals filed against the decision sent the matter back to court.

On Thursday morning, the Paris Court of Appeals finalized its decision, upholding the November 2024 ruling, ordering that Abdallah be freed by July 25th.

The decision is contingent on Abdallah’s deportation back to his native Lebanon.

Throughout his four decades in jail, Abdallah denied carrying out the deadly attacks, but nevertheless took responsibility for them as head of LARF, and justified them as “acts of resistance” against Israel and the US.

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