Word: french
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...French were not so sure. Their counterterrorist agency had discounted information about him received from Israeli intelligence. In late 1984, however, French police arrested Abdallah for possessing false passports. But before he could be convicted of that crime, the F.A.R.L. in Lebanon captured a hostage, Gilles Peyroles, director of the French Cultural Center. The French reportedly entered into secret negotiations to swap Abdallah for Peyroles. Then, just a day after Peyroles was released, police found in an apartment Abdallah had rented the pistol that killed Ray and Barsimantov...
With that, the French refused to turn Abdallah over despite Peyroles's release, and instead filed charges against him of weapons possession and complicity in the assassinations. The F.A.R.L. responded last fall with a bombing rampage in Paris that killed eleven people and injured 160 others. Though some Frenchmen feared that a conviction of Abdallah would lead to a new round of violence, the U.S. decided to become a civil plaintiff in the case...
During the trial, Defense Lawyer Verges tried to show that the circumstantial evidence against his client was too inconclusive to establish his complicity. Moreover, two key French witnesses claimed that Abdallah was only a minor player in the F.A.R.L. and thus unlikely to meet the requirements for proving complicity under French...
...central issue was whether Abdallah was only a "little boss" who had "let himself be captured," as a French intelligence official claimed, or an architect of international terrorism, as the Americans maintained. Both sides agreed with the French police source who said of Abdallah, "He was good -- no paper trail, no proof. In short, a professional." After hearing the evidence, the judges apparently concluded he was too good, in fact, to be let off lightly...
...soon the Couvreux family will sail away again. Through the Panama Canal and up the west coast to Alaska, they think, and eventually to Tahiti, of course, and one year or another, Michel says, "we go to France so my boys can be French too." When they are at sea, the boys take correspondence courses that are accredited in France. When anchored, Michel feels schools are important for social intercourse. "They must know there are little girls" (yes, thank heaven, he said, "leetel gulls") "and good guys and bad guys and all those things...