After more than four decades behind bars in France, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah – the Lebanese leftist militant imprisoned since 1984 – will return to Lebanon on Friday. His release, authorised by a Paris appeals court July 17 on the condition that he leave France immediately, brings to a close one of the longest political detentions in modern European history. Abdallah will be released from his prison cell in southern France on July 25 and transported by military aircraft to Paris.