Recently declassified emails from the account of former US Secretary of State and current US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ([email protected]) reveal that in 2013, as Secretary of State, she intervened directly with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, seeking French action to block the release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. The call in question between Clinton and Fabius took place on 11 January 2013 – only one day after the French Court of Appeals had ordered Abdallah’s release.
Abdallah, a Lebanese Arab Communist struggler for Palestine imprisoned in French jails since 1984, was granted parole in 2013 by France’s highest court – an action blocked, following Clinton’s intervention, by the French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, who refused to deport Abdallah to Lebanon, claiming “monitoring” of his parole would be impossible in his home country.
See full PDF of call notes: http://sd-6.archive-host.com/membres/up/03bac9640e17b43eb218f4e3b4970b474fb26537/Note_US_Georges_Abdallah_-_C05797452.pdf
This was far from the first intervention by the United States into Abdallah’s case; thirty years prior, in 1986, Ronald Reagan intervened with Francois Mitterand in order to block Abdallah’s release from prison. US State Department officials and members of Congress have repeatedly stated their demands to keep Abdallah imprisoned.
Source: Le Desordre and Secours Rouge
Who Is Georges Ibrahim Abdallah?
A Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine, he has been imprisoned in French prisons since 1984, convicted on charges of participation in armed actions by the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, working to fight off colonialist and Zionist invasions in Lebanon.
From his youth, Georges Abdallah was an activist, working first with the Syrian Social Nationalist party and then with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). With the PFLP, he resisted and was injured by Israeli forces invading Lebanon in 1978. A committed Communist and internationalist, he views the Arab struggle for liberation from Zionism and imperialism as part and parcel of the international workers’ struggle for liberation from capitalism.
The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction (LARF) was formed to fight off and resist U.S., Israeli and other imperialist attacks on Lebanon. Georges Abdallah was accused of participating in attacks on U.S. and Israeli military officials in France.
He has been eligible for release since 1999 yet continues to be denied parole, despite having parole requests approved several times by French judges. The Lebanese government has officially asked for his release, and he is asking to be deported to Lebanon. Yet the French state has intervened at the highest levels, alongside the U.S and Israeli regimes, to deny Georges Abdallah’s parole requests.
