France, June 19 -- A French court is expected to rule on Thursday whether to release Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, a Lebanese activist jailed in France since 1984 for his role in the assassinations of an American and an Israeli diplomat two years earlier. Now 74, he has been eligible for parole since 1999 - but despite more than a dozen requests and a conditional release order in 2023, Abdallah remains behind bars. Why?

Abdallah was arrested in 1984 in connection with the killings of US military attache Charles Robert Ray and Israeli diplomat Yacov Barsimantov in Paris. While he was not the gunman, he was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for complicity in their murders.

The assassinations were claimed by the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary ...