The United States on Saturday criticized France’s expulsion to Lebanon the previous day of convicted terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, calling it a “grave injustice.”
Abdullah’s “release threatens the safety of U.S. diplomats abroad and is a grave injustice to the victims and the families of those killed,” tweeted Tammy Bruce, the U.S. State Department’s spokesperson.
“The United States will continue to support the pursuit of justice in this matter,” she added.
The United States opposes the French government’s release and expulsion to Lebanon of convicted terrorist Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. His release threatens the safety of U.S. diplomats abroad and is a grave injustice to the victims and the families of those killed. The United…
— U.S. Department of State Spokesperson (@statedeptspox) July 26, 2025
Abdullah, 74, served 40 years of a life sentence for his role in the murder of Israeli and American diplomats in 1982.
He is a “terrorist responsible for the murders of the Israeli diplomat Yaacov Barsiman-Tov, killed in front of his wife and daughter, and the American diplomat Charles Ray,” the Israeli embassy in Paris said in a statement following the decision of a French appeals court on July 18 to release Abdullah from prison.
“Such terrorists, enemies of the free world, should spend their lives in prison,” the embassy added.
The Paris Appeals Court agreed to release Abdallah on July 25, to be followed by an immediate expulsion to his native Lebanon, arguing that he posed “no serious risk in terms of committing new terrorism acts.”
Abdallah, former head of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group, was detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 for complicity in the murder of the aforementioned U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ray and Israeli diplomat Barsiman-Tov. Both men were 43.
On Jan. 18, 1982, Ray, serving as assistant army attaché in Paris, was gunned down by a lone terrorist as he was walking to his car. Witnesses said a Middle Eastern-looking man approached Ray, pulled out a 7.65-mm pistol, and shot him in the forehead.
“He was a distinguished Military Intelligence officer, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and serving his first assignment as a military attaché. He was married with two children. President Ronald Reagan promoted Ray to colonel posthumously on 3 June 1982,” according to the Defense Intelligence Agency website.
