Leftist Lebanese prisoner Georges Abdallah Monday announced he will go on a three-day hunger strike in solidarity with roughly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who have done the same for over a week
Joseph Abdallah, a member of the International Campaign to Free Georges Abdallah, added in a Facebook post that several of his inmates in France, where he is serving a life sentence, will join the three-day solidarity hunger strike.
Georges Abdallah last went on hunger strike for three days in August 2016, also in support of Palestinian prisoners.
Abdallah was arrested in Lyon in October 1984 and convicted three years later to life in prison for his alleged involvement in the killing of an Israeli diplomat and an American military attache in Paris in 1982.
Abdallah has maintained his innocence. He was up for parole in 1999 by virtue of France's penal code, but Paris has rejected nine appeals for his release.
Under the French judicial system, a life sentence means that after 15 years in prison, a prisoner has the right to demand his or her release.
In 2013, French courts accepted a request to release Abdallah, and within the 24-hour deadline, no appeals were made. His supporters in Lebanon were preparing for his reception and the date of his return was set. But then-Interior Minister of France Manuel Valls denied his return to Lebanon under U.S. pressure.
