Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings of USA’s Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimant.
A French court has cleared the way for the release of a Lebanese imprisoned in the killings of US and Israeli diplomats in France in the early 1980s.
French prosecutors said on Friday that Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Brigade, arrested for the first time in 1984 and sentenced in 1987 over the 1982 killings, would be released on December 6 on condition he leaves France.
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 in connection with the murders in 1982 of US diplomat Charles Ray in Paris and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in 1982, and the attempted murder in 1984 of US Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg.
Requests for the release of Abdallah have been denied and reversed: 2003, 2012, and 2014 are among them.
The now 73-year-old Abdallah has always maintained he is a “fighter” who fought for the rights of Palestinians, not a “criminal.” It was his 11th attempt to be released.
He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999, but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013, when he was granted release provided he was expelled from France.
But then-interior Minister Manuel Valls refused to carry out the order, and Abdallah remained in jail.
Friday’s court decision was not conditional on such a government order, Abdallah’s lawyer Jean-Louis Chalanset told the AFP news agency, hailing “a legal and political victory.”
