Lebanese communist and fervent defender of the Palestinian cause, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has been locked up in French state jails for 41 years. He is thus the oldest political prisoner in Europe and the oldest detainee in the world incarcerated for acts linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict..
Released since 1999, this “modern-day Manouchian” has suffered nine refusals from the French state. Since 2013, his release has been validated by the courts but conditioned on an expulsion order from French territory that Manuel Valls that year, then Darmanin in 2022, systematically refused him.
This Monday, October 7, the sentence enforcement judge examined the latest request for conditional release filed by his lawyer, Maître Jean-Louis Chalanset. At the end of 5 hours of hearing, the latter denounced to Révolution Permanente “ a relentlessness of the prosecution which clearly wants him to die in prison “. He describes in particular difficult debates, during which the two deputy prosecutors of the National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) argued at length in favor of the activist’s continued detention. A clear ideological position, seeking to exploit October 7 and the war in the Middle East to defend a grotesque risk of “recurrence” by Georges Abdallah.
While the deliberations will be made on November 15, 2024, the position of the PNAT is unmistakable: it is indeed a political hearing, which expresses the fear of the French State of releasing a face of the fight for the liberation of the Palestine at a time when the genocide is intensifying and its imperialist accomplices are firmly accused throughout the world.
We must take the measure of this judicial brutality. Life imprisonment is in reality prohibited by texts protecting fundamental rights and by the European Court of Human Rights. It recently issued several judgments to this effect, condemning in particular Hungary and Belgium which imposed prison sentences considered to be inhuman and degrading treatment..
If France persists in such relentlessness, it is precisely because it seeks to silence dissonant voices and to stifle the history of the anti-imperialist struggle. This is why between now and November 15, we must make the name of Georges Abdallah resonate everywhere and demand, more than ever, his release. In this sense, the demonstration on October 26 in front of Lannemezan prison must be an unmissable event of all those who are in solidarity with the Palestinian cause and the struggle for emancipation.
