France Will Put Arab on Trial in 2 Assassinations

PARIS — A French court ruled Wednesday that Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, reputed leader of a Lebanese guerrilla faction, must stand trial for complicity in the 1982 assassinations of a U.S. military attache and an Israeli diplomat.

The ruling raised anxiety about a recurrence of bombings in Paris if Abdallah is found guilty and also raised questions about the government’s reported understanding with the bombers.

Court sources indicated that the trial will probably begin next month, a speeding up of the usually slow French legal process. This seemed to meet a reported demand by associates of Abdallah that the French get the trial over with as soon as possible.

If found innocent, the 36-year-old Abdallah, who has served more than two years of a four-year sentence for possessing arms, explosives and false documents, would be eligible for release from prison. A guilty verdict, unless the charge is reduced, could mean a long sentence.

Terrorists who killed 11 people and wounded 162 others in a series of random bombings in September demanded the release of Abdallah and several others as their price for halting the terror. When the bombings stopped, there were reports that the government had reached some sort of accommodation with Abdallah’s allies.

The Chamber of Accusation of the Paris Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Abdallah must stand trial for complicity in the Paris assassinations of Lt. Col. Charles Robert Ray, a U.S. military attache, on Jan. 18, 1982, and Yacov Barsimantov, an Israeli diplomat, on April 3, 1982. Abdallah also will be tried on a charge of attempted murder in connection with an incident involving U.S. Consul Robert Onan Homme, who was wounded by gunfire in Strasbourg in 1984.

The court also ordered that Jacqueline Esber, a companion of Abdallah, be tried on a charge of murder in the Barsimantov case and attempted murder in the Homme incident. The police do not know the whereabouts of Esber, and she will be tried in absentia.

The two will be tried by a special court of seven magistrates, without a jury, set up late last year to deal with terrorist cases. The courts found it impossible to try another suspected terrorist last year when his threats frightened jurors away.

Abdullah’s Friends, Kin

Abdallah is reputed to head the organization known as the Lebanese Revolutionary Armed Factions, which has claimed responsibility for the two killings and the attempted killing. Its members are mostly brothers and friends of Abdallah from a small Christian town in the northern area of Lebanon now under control of the Syrian army.

French police believe that the September bombers were members of the Abdallah clan. After the bombings stopped, Le Monde, France’s most influential newspaper, reported that the French government had worked out a truce with the Abdallah clan. Under it, according to Le Monde, the terrorists would stop their bombing until a trial took place in February.

At the time, it was widely assumed that there was not enough evidence to convict Abdallah of complicity in the Ray and Barsimantov cases, the only charges pending against him. Since then, however, new evidence has been uncovered linking Abdallah to the Homme shooting.

The weekly news magazine Le Point said recently that emissaries of the bombers had warned the government of a new wave of terror if the trial of Abdallah did not take place before March.