Hillary Clinton intervenes with French foreign minister to block release of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah
by samidoun
Recently
declassified emails from the account of former US Secretary of State
and current US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton (hrod17@clintonemail.com)
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-
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.
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