Accused Murderer of Israeli Goes on Trial on Lesser Charges

The man accused of having masterminded the murder of an Israeli diplomat and an American military attache was tried last week on lesser charges of arms smuggling and using fake passports.

The prosecution asked for a four year prison term for Georges Ibrahim Abdullah, a 35-year-old Christian Lebanese believed to be one of the main leaders of a Lebanese Marxist terrorist organization.

The verdict will be announced July 10 and should Abdullah be sentenced to the requested four years, he might be set free at once and expelled from France as his pre-trial detention would cover his term.

Court sources in Lyon say that his expulsion would save the French government from having to try him for complicity in the murders of Israeli diplomat Yaakov Bar Simantov, who was murdered in April, 1982 outside his home in Paris, and that of the American Deputy Military Attache Lt. Col. Ray Charles Jr. on January 18, 1982.

Abdullah has been formally charged with complicity in these killings by a Paris investigative judge, but no date has been set for the trial.

Since Abdullah’s arrest in 1984 some of his organization’s terrorist activities in France have stopped and a French diplomat held as a hostage by his gang, the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, set free.

‘ABDULLAH IS A FIGHTER, NOT A CRIMINAL’

Abdullah’s lawyer, Jacques Verges, who is also counsel for Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal, told the Lyon criminal court last Thursday “Abdullah is a fighter not a criminal.” He also hinted at the possibility that “arrangements can be found.”

Observers guessed he meant that Abdullah’s release and expulsion from France might speed up the release of two French hostages, Marcel Fontaine and Marcel Carton, two diplomats who have been held for over two years.