POLTICAL PRISONERS
French court orders release of Lebanese militant held since 1984
By AFP
November 15, 2024
Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison
By AFP
November 15, 2024
Abdallah had been sentenced to life in prison
- Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.
The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.
“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.
Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.
Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.
Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.
He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.
However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.
The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.
– Veteran inmate –
One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.
Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.
Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).
A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.
At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.
His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.
There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.
A French court on Friday ordered the release of pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed for 40 years for the killing of two foreign diplomats, prosecutors said.
The court said Abdallah, first detained in 1984 and convicted in 1987 over the 1982 murders, would be released on December 6 provided he leaves France, French anti-terror prosecutors said in a statement to AFP, adding that they would appeal.
“In (a) decision dated today, the court granted Georges Ibrahim Abdallah conditional release from December 6, subject to the condition that he leaves French territory and not appear there again,” the prosecutors said.
Abdallah, a former guerrilla in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), was sentenced to life in prison for his involvement in the murders of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov.
Washington has consistently opposed his release but Lebanese authorities have repeatedly said he should be freed from jail.
Abdallah, now 73, has always insisted he is a “fighter” who battled for the rights of Palestinians and not a “criminal”. This was his 11th bid for release.
He had been eligible to apply for parole since 1999 but all his previous applications had been turned down, except in 2013 when he was granted release on the condition he was expelled from France.
However the then interior minister Manuel Valls refused to go through with the order and Abdallah remained in jail.
The court’s decision on Friday is not conditional on the government issuing such an order, Abdallah’s lawyer, Jean-Louis Chalanset, told AFP, hailing “a legal and a political victory”.
– Veteran inmate –
One of France’s longest serving inmates, Abdallah has never expressed regret for his actions.
Wounded in 1978 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he joined the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s and is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.
Abdallah, a Christian, then in the late 1970s founded his own militant group the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) which had contact with other extreme-left militant outfits including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).
A pro-Syrian and anti-Israeli Marxist group, the LARF claimed four deady attacks in France in the 1980s. Abdallah was arrested in 1984 after entering a police station in Lyon and claiming Mossad assassins were on his trail.
At his trial over the killing of the diplomats, Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison, a much more severe punishment than the 10 years demanded by prosecutors.
His lawyer Jacques Verges, who defended clients including Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal, described the verdict as a “declaration of war”.
There remains a broad swell of support for his cause among the far left and communists in France. Last month, 2022 Nobel literature prize winner Annie Ernaux, said in a piece in communist daily L’Humanite that his detention “shamed France”.
By AFP
November 15, 2024
Russian poet Artyom Kamardin, 34, was jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war poetry. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five a half year for attending the public reading - Copyright AFP Alexander NEMENOV
Anna SMOLCHENKO
The wife of a Russian poet jailed for seven years for reciting anti-war verses said she was afraid he could be killed in prison after he was sexually assaulted with a dumbbell during his arrest.
Artyom Kamardin was arrested in September 2022 after reciting — on a Moscow square where dissidents have been gathering since the late 1950s — a poem that fiercely criticised Russia’s war against Ukraine.
In December 2023, Kamardin was convicted of inciting hatred and undermining national security. Fellow poet Yegor Shtovba, 23, was sentenced to five and a half years for attending the public reading.
Kamardin, 34, lost his appeal last month and is soon expected to be sent to a penal colony to serve his term.
“I am afraid they will kill him,” his wife Alexandra Popova, 30, who is still based in Russia, told AFP during a visit to Paris. “He is being treated a bit like a Ukrainian. Like a Ukrainian captive.”
In a widely-publicised case, both Kamardin and Popova were beaten and humiliated when security forces stormed their apartment the day after he read his poem, entitled “Kill me, militiaman!”, according to them and rights activists.
The reading took place days after President Vladimir Putin announced a partial military mobilisation, the first such call-up since World War II.
Kamardin’s poem from 2015 is peppered with swear words and takes aim at pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“Kill me, militiaman! You’ve already tasted blood! You’ve seen how brothers-in-arms dig mass graves for the brotherly people,” Kamardin declaimed near the statue of Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.
– ‘Fascist dictatorship’ –
In a statement from jail, Kamardin said poetry helped him reflect on “my homeland’s transformation into a fascist dictatorship”.
“I was born in a free Russia,” he wrote. “Now this country no longer exists, it was killed and devoured by the monster that calls itself Russia now.”
During the raid Kamardin was sexually abused with a dumbbell handle, according to Popova.
Security force members used their phones to record the assault, she said. “There was a lot of blood,” Popova added. Kamardin was then told to go on his knees to record an apology video.
The men also threatened to gang-rape Popova. “At one point they locked themselves in a room with me and pretended to start taking off their trousers,” she said. The couple were also called Nazis.
Amnesty International has said that the details of “his arrest and torture are horrific even against the abysmal human rights standards of today’s Russia.”
Russian propaganda has mounted a campaign of harassment against the couple. “Sit tight, or they will kill you,” Kamardin was already told in jail, according to his wife.
Putin has used the war, now in its third year, to radically transform Russian society.
Independent media outlets have been shut, top rights groups dismantled, criticism of the war outlawed, and dissidents jailed, muzzled or pushed out of the country. Putin’s top opponent Alexei Navalny, 47, died suddenly in an Arctic colony in February.
Popova, who is part of a six-member collective supporting Russian political prisoners, said the country had changed since the start of the war.
Many people now justify “the killing of other people”.
Even if Moscow’s war against Ukraine comes to an end, repression in Russia might not stop, she said.
“Society has become cruel,” Popova added. “People inform on each other.”
The head of the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, said last month there was no repression in Russia, with just “minimal restrictions” against those who he said “are essentially siding” with the West.
– ‘Only chance to save people’ –
Popova urged Western governments to do everything to help free Russian political prisoners.
She praised the release of 16 Russian dissidents and foreign nationals in a prisoner swap on August 1 and said more such exchanges were needed.
“People die in Russian prisons,” she said, calling them “victims of war”.
“These are the people who oppose what is happening now and they pay for their position with their health and lives.”
In July, Pavel Kushnir, a 39-year-old pianist and anti-war activist, died in detention in the city of Birobidzhan near the China–Russia border.
In April, Alexander Demidenko, a 61-year-old volunteer who helped Ukrainian refugees, died in jail in the southern city of Belgorod.
“Artyom has a chance to get out earlier if there are any exchanges of political prisoners,” Popova said.
“The only chance now to save people from Russian prisons is through exchanges.”
While many Kremlin critics have left Russia, Popova said she had no plans to go. She wanted to keep supporting political prisoners, above all her husband.
“My heart is bleeding,” she said. “I have to be near him.”
Russia shuts Moscow’s famed gulag museum
By AFP
November 14, 2024
The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV
Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.
The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.
“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.
The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.
They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.
Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.
Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.
The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.
Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.
The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”
– ‘Great loss’ –
Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.
“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.
“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”
But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.
“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.
“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”
Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.
While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.
School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.
Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.
In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.
Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.
By AFP
November 14, 2024
The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV
Russian authorities ordered the closure from Thursday of Moscow’s award-winning Gulag History Museum, dedicated to the victims of Soviet-era repression.
The closure was officially put down to alleged violations of fire safety regulations, but comes amid an intense campaign being waged by the Kremlin against independent civil society and those who question the state’s interpretation of history.
“The decision to temporarily suspend the activities of the State Gulag Museum was taken for safety reasons,” the Moscow city culture department told AFP on Thursday.
The museum removed content from its website, replacing it with an announcement of the “temporary” closure.
They declined to comment further when contacted by AFP on Thursday.
Established in 2001, the central Moscow museum brings together official state documents with family photographs and objects from gulag victims.
Moscow authorities said 46,000 people visited in the first nine months of the year.
The gulag was a vast network of prison labour camps set up in the Soviet Union.
Millions of alleged traitors and enemies of the state were sent there, many to their deaths, in what historians recognise as a period of massive political repression.
The Council of Europe awarded the site its Museum Prize in 2021, saying it worked to “expose history and activate memory, with the goal of strengthening the resilience of civil society and its resistance to political repression and violation of human rights today and in the future.”
– ‘Great loss’ –
Outside the museum on Thursday, worker Mikhail, who declined to give his last name, lamented its possible closure.
“It’s a strong museum, very impressive. It’s disappointing that this happened. It’s a loss, a great loss if, God forbid, it’s permanent,” he told AFP.
“We need people to see it, to understand, to know that it must not be repeated.”
But Moscovite Yulia, a musician in her 50s who also declined to give her last name, welcomed the closure.
“I’m against such establishments, I’m not sad,” she told AFP while walking her dog in a nearby park.
“I’m a Stalinist… people die in every era, right now as well. We can’t make monuments for every era.”
Through his 24 years in power, President Vladimir Putin has sought to revise Russia’s historical narrative and its relationship with the Soviet Union.
While occasionally condemning the vast repression under Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, Putin more often hails him as a great wartime leader.
School textbooks pay little attention to the millions of victims of the Great Terror, seen as inconvenient in the promotion of the Soviet Union as a great power that defeated Nazi Germany.
Authorities have increasingly targeted individuals and groups who push back against this approach — a campaign that has stepped up amid the Ukraine offensive.
In 2021, authorities ordered the liquidation of Memorial, the Nobel Prize-winning NGO that records victims of both Soviet repression and allegations of human rights violations by the current regime.
Last month the Gulag History Museum staged a “Return of the Names” event — when individuals read out the names of people killed during Soviet terror.
Iran activist kills himself after demanding release of prisoners
By AFP
November 14, 2024
ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV
Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.
Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.
He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.
The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.
Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.
“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.
He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.
“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.
It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.
– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –
Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.
Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.
“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.
Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”
The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”
British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.
“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.
By AFP
November 14, 2024
ctress Bridget Moynahan (L) and activist Kianoosh Sanjari at an Amnesty International Concert in New York - Copyright AFP/File VASILY MAXIMOV
Human rights campaigners on Thursday paid tribute to an Iranian activist who killed himself hours after warning he would do so if four inmates seen to be political prisoners were not freed.
Kianoosh Sanjari, an opponent of the Islamic republic’s clerical authorities, warned in a message on X late Wednesday that he would commit suicide if the release of the two men and two women did not take place.
He then took his own life, according to multiple rights campaigners and organisations.
The formal announcement of his death, which is swiftly published by families in Iran when a relative dies, was also widely shared on social media.
Sanjari had demanded the release of veteran campaigner Fatemeh Sepehri, Nasreen Shakarami, the mother of a teenager killed during 2022 protests, rapper Tomaj Salehi and civil rights activist Arsham Rezaei.
“If they are not released from prison by 7:00 pm today, Wednesday, and the news of their release is not published on the judiciary news site, I will end my life in protest against the dictatorship of (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei and his accomplices,” he said.
He later added: “No one should be imprisoned for expressing their opinions. Protest is the right of every Iranian citizen.
“My life will end after this tweet but let’s not forget that we die and die for the love of life, not death,” he added.
It was not immediately clear how he killed himself. Sanjari had late Wednesday posted an image that appeared to have been taken looking down on the street from the upper floor of a Tehran tower block.
– ‘Islamic Republic killed him’ –
Figures from across the opposition spectrum expressed grief, saying the suicide was indicative of the climate in the Islamic republic due to the crackdown that followed the 2022-2023 nationwide protests which shook the authorities.
Activists said Senjari had been repeatedly arrested and summoned in Iran since returning to take care of his elderly mother in 2015 after a stint working in the US for Voice of America.
“His death is a warning to all of us of how heavy the price of silence and indifference can be,” said campaigner Arash Sadeghi, who endured a lengthy spell in jail during the protests.
Atena Daemi, a labour activist released from jail in 2022, wrote on X that the “Islamic Republic had killed him bit by bit…. the Islamic republic is responsible for his death.”
The US-based son of the ousted shah, Reza Pahlavi, said: “our fight is for life against the regime of death and execution.”
British actor of Iranian origin Nazanin Boniadi said the chorus of tributes was in stark contrast to the arguments that often mark exchanges in Iranian opposition circles.
“A unity that should exist in life, not just in death. We have one common enemy: the Islamic republic regime. Let’s behave accordingly,” she said.
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