LEBANESE communists condemned a French court for refusing to free political prisoner George Abdallah today, accusing it of bending to US imperialism and Israeli zionism.

“Once again, the French administration demonstrates its arbitrariness in continuing its detention of the militant George Ibrahim Abdullah and its absolute bias toward the US administration and zionist aggression,” the Lebanese Communist Party (LCP) said after Thursday’s ruling.

It compared the continued imprisonment of Mr Abdallah to “the administrative detention by the zionist occupation authorities against the Palestinian people” and said that it reflected “an ongoing crime committed by the French authorities.”

Known as the Arab Nelson Mandela, Mr Abdallah is the longest-serving political prisoner in Europe, having been behind bars for 37 years.

Mr Abdallah was initially arrested in Lyon on October 24 1984. The only charge against him at the time was the possession of false identity documents, for which he was first convicted.

But in 1987 he was found guilty of complicity in the killing of committed by US military attache Lieutenant Colonel Charles R Ray and Israeli diplomat Yaakov Bar-Simantov in Paris by the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions of which he was a founder member. 

The killings took place during the Lebanese civil war and the men who were killed were deemed legitimate military targets.

Supporters say that his trial was flawed, with one of his own lawyers Jean-Paul Mazurier spying on him and later admitting to working for the French state. 

The evidence, a cache of arms was said to have been fabricated by French, US and Israeli intelligence services.  

He declared before his judges: “I am a fighter, not a criminal. The path I followed was imposed on me by the human rights abuses perpetrated against the Palestinians.”

Despite the French attorney general, who represented the prosecution calling for a 10-year sentence, pressure from the US and Israel saw an exceptional court jail Mr Abdallah for life.

He is, however, considered to be a hero of the resistance in Lebanon where authorities have said they would welcome his return to the country.

But successive French interior ministers have refused to sign papers allowing his deportation, with the US maintaining strong opposition to Mr Abdallah’s release.

The LCP accused the French state of using “its usual colonial cunning” to keep the revolutionary behind bars.

It vowed to continue the struggle for Mr Abdallah’s freedom and called on France to “stop its injustice and oppression” while calling for all Lebanese people to take action for his liberation from French injustice.