France: A Paris Court Stands Firm

Was Georges Ibrahim Abdallah a kingpin in the world of international terrorism, or was he just a “little boss,” as a French intelligence official claimed? After hearing the evidence against the self-styled “Arab fighter” last week in an ornate Paris courtroom where World War II collaborators were once tried, a special seven-judge tribunal deliberated for just 73 minutes before reaching its verdict. Not only did the tribunal find Abdallah guilty of complicity in the killings of two diplomats, including one American, and in the attempted murder of a third, but it went further than the prosecution had requested by handing down an unexpectedly severe sentence: life imprisonment. Abdallah’s lawyer, Jacques Verges, declared that the verdict would be seen by “many Arab militants as a declaration of war.” But American officials were gratified that the court had taken a stand against terrorism. Said U.S. Ambassador to France Joe Rodgers: “What we sought was justice, and justice has been rendered.”

For some time, American, Israeli and Italian intelligence agencies had been convinced that Abdallah was a leader of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary ^ Factions (known as F.A.R.L.), a group that since 1981 had made eight attacks on Americans or Israelis in Europe. The agencies further contended that he was a mastermind of international terror who had arranged the killings of Assistant U.S. Military Attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli Diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris in 1982 and tried to murder U.S. Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984.

The French were not so sure. Their counterterrorist agency had discounted information about him received from Israeli intelligence. In late 1984, however, French police arrested Abdallah for possessing false passports. But before he could be convicted of that crime, the F.A.R.L. in Lebanon captured a hostage, Gilles Peyroles, director of the French Cultural Center. The French reportedly entered into secret negotiations to swap Abdallah for Peyroles. Then, just a day after Peyroles was released, police found in an apartment Abdallah had rented the pistol that killed Ray and Barsimantov.

With that, the French refused to turn Abdallah over despite Peyroles’s release, and instead filed charges against him of weapons possession and complicity in the assassinations. The F.A.R.L. responded last fall with a bombing rampage in Paris that killed eleven people and injured 160 others. Though some Frenchmen feared that a conviction of Abdallah would lead to a new round of violence, the U.S. decided to become a civil plaintiff in the case.

During the trial, Defense Lawyer Verges tried to show that the circumstantial evidence against his client was too inconclusive to establish his complicity. Moreover, two key French witnesses claimed that Abdallah was only a minor player in the F.A.R.L. and thus unlikely to meet the requirements for proving complicity under French law.

The central issue was whether Abdallah was only a “little boss” who had “let himself be captured,” as a French intelligence official claimed, or an architect of international terrorism, as the Americans maintained. Both sides agreed with the French police source who said of Abdallah, “He was good — no paper trail, no proof. In short, a professional.” After hearing the evidence, the judges apparently concluded he was too good, in fact, to be let off lightly.