On July 25th the BBC promoted a report by its Paris correspondent Hugh Schofield:
Readers of Schofield’s article – headlined “Pro-Palestinian convict freed by France after 41 years” and tagged “Israel and the Palestinians” and “Palestinian territories” despite the story having no direct connection to either of those topics – are told that: [emphasis added]
“Georges Abdallah, a 74-year-old Lebanese teacher who became a left-wing symbol for the Palestinian cause, has been freed by France on Friday after 41 years in jail.”
Only in paragraph three do readers get any inkling of why that “symbol” had been imprisoned.
“Convicted in 1987 for complicity in the murders in France of two diplomats – one American, one Israeli – Abdallah has gradually been forgotten by the wider public.
But his release remained a cause célèbre for activists on the Marxist-Leninist left, with which he still identifies.”
Later in the report, readers find the following:
“Born in 1951 into a Christian family in northern Lebanon, in the late 1970s Abdallah helped set up the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF) – a small Marxist group dedicated to fighting Israel and its closest ally, the United States. […]
Abdallah’s group decided to hit Israeli and US targets in Europe, and carried out five attacks in France. In 1982 its members shot and killed US diplomat Charles Ray in Strasbourg, and Israeli diplomat Yakov Barsimantov in Paris. In addition a car bomb blamed on LARF killed two French bomb-disposal experts.
Abdallah was arrested in Lyon in 1984. Tailed by French intelligence officers, he thought he was being followed by Israeli assassins and gave himself in at a police station. Initially he was charged only with having false passports and criminal association.
A short time later a French citizen was kidnapped in northern Lebanon, and the French secret service entered a negotiation via Algeria to engineer an exchange.
The French citizen was freed, but just before Abdallah was to be released police in Paris found a cache of weapons at his flat, including the gun used to kill the diplomats. This made his release impossible. […]
In the trial, Abdallah denied involvement in the murders but defended their legitimacy. He was given a life sentence.”
The Times of Israel provides information about Abdallah’s links to terrorist organisations which Schofield omits.
“…Abdallah joined the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which carried out a string of plane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s. It is banned as a terror group by the US and EU.
Then, in the late 1970s, Abdallah, a Christian, founded his terror group, the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). It made contact with other extreme-left outfits, including Italy’s Red Brigades and the German Red Army Faction (RAF).”
Another remarkable aspect of Schofield’s report is found in the paragraph which reads as follows in the version currently online:
“Two years later in the run up to his trial, Paris was hit by a spate of attacks which killed 13 people. These were blamed by politicians and the media on allies of Abdallah trying to pressurise France into freeing him. Later it was established that in fact they were the work of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, under instructions from Iran.”
However, in all four previous versions of the report, that paragraph read as follows:
“Two years later in the run up to his trial, Paris was hit by a spate of terrorist attacks which killed 13 people. These were blamed by politicians and the media on allies of Abdallah trying to pressurise France into freeing him. Later it was established that in fact they were the work of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, under instructions from Iran.”
Apparently the BBC News website’s editors decided at some point that the planting of bombs in shops, cafes and public transport by a proscribed terrorist organisation did not justify the use of the word “terrorist”.
The BBC’s portrayal of a man who founded a terrorist organisation and was convicted for his involvement in the murders of two diplomats as a “pro-Palestinian convict” was the topic of a question to the BBC from the Jewish Chronicle:
“Asked by the JC whether the article was unduly sympathetic to Abdallah, contained a misleading headline or broke impartiality rules, the BBC declined to comment.
A spokesperson said only: “[We] stand by our journalism.””
Update:
CAMERA Arabic secured corrections to a BBC Arabic filmed report on the same story following a complaint. The report’s original reference to Abdallah as a “political prisoner” was removed and the claim that only Israel opposed his release was amended to note US opposition.
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