French Suburb Honors Man Imprisoned for Murder of American and Israel Diplomats
A suburb of the French capital honored a man imprisoned for helping to murder diplomats from Israel and the United States.
A majority of aldermen in the city council of Bagnolet east of the French capital voted on Wednesday to make the Lebanese citizen Georges Ibrahim Abdallah an honorary resident, calling him a “communist activist” and “political prisoner” who “belongs to the resistance movement of Lebanon, his country,” French media reported Friday.
Abdallah, a founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, was captured in 1984. A French court sentenced him in 1987 to life in prison for “complicity in the assassinations” in 1982 of Charles R. Ray, a U.S. military attaché serving in Paris, and Yacov Bar-Simantov, a second counsellor at the Israeli embassy in Paris.
Bar-Simantov’s killer, a woman wearing a white beret, fled into the Paris subway after shooting him in the head in front of his wife and children at their apartment building. The diplomat was the second secretary for political affairs at the embassy.
Abdallah shot Ray, an assistant military attache, outside Ray’s apartment building the same year.
The motion passed by the council of Bagnolet, where the French Communist party enjoys a majority, does not mention his crimes. In it, he is referred to as a “one of Europe’s last remaining political prisoners” and “determined defender of the Palestinian just cause.”
His release is being prevented “primarily because of the intervention of the U.S. government,” the motion read.
“To call for his liberation, the municipal council declares him an honorary citizen of Bagnolet,” it says.
Abdallah, who was first eligible for parole in 1999, has failed in eight bids to be released. A parole board approved his most recent bid in January, but the interior minister, Manuel Valls, refused to sign the order after complaints from the U.S. embassy and lawmakers in the U.S. Congress.
Lola Perez, a journalist for the French Jewish news site JSSNews, called the motion “a scandalous motion for Frenchmen and all defenders of human rights.”
Contacted by JTA, a spokesperson for the city of Bagnolet said the mayor had no immediate comment on the issue.
Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.
But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses — take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
