PARIS -- A Lebanese man was ordered held for trial after a pistol found in his Paris hideout turned out to be the weapon that killed a U.S. and an Israeli diplomat, court officials said Tuesday.
A judge Monday ordered the trial for Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, considered by police to be one of the leaders of the terrorist group Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction, on charges of complicity in voluntary homicide.
Abdallah was picked up for questioning in Lyon Oct. 24 and was being held on charges of carrying false Algerian and Maltese passports, criminal association and carrying arms and explosives.
In his hideout in a middle-class Paris neighborhood, police in early April found a Czech-made 7.65-caliber pistol, 55 pounds of explosives, two rockets, submachine guns and other weapons.
Recently concluded tests determined the pistol was the gun used to murder Lt. Col. Charles Ray, military attache to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, on Jan. 18, 1982, and Yacov Barsimantov, second secretary of the Israeli Embassy in Paris, on April 3, 1982, police said.
The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction claimed responsibility for both assassinations.
The group has also claimed three other attacks on Americans, including the unsuccessful assassination of acting U.S. Ambassador Christian Chapman in 1981, the wounding of U.S. Consul General Robert Homme in Strasbourg in 1984 and the attempted bomb attack on U.S. Embassy Commercial Counselor Roderick Grant in August 1982.
Two French bomb experts were killed as they tried to defuse the bomb placed in Grant's car.
In another development, the extreme left-wing group Direct Action Tuesday claimed responsibility for an unsuccessful attempt on the life of a French army general last week.
In a statement given to a French news agency, the group said the attack on Gen. Henri Blandin failed because of 'an accumulation of technical mishaps.'
The statement said the machine gun used in the June 26 attack 'jammed.'
The group said it had chosen Blandin as a target because he was the 'right-hand man' of Defense Minister Charles Hernu.
Direct Action has claimed responsibility for several other killings, including the January assassination of Gen. Rene Audran, responsible for overseeing French arms exports.
