The Green Party has said it “takes all allegations of this nature seriously” after it was reported that the member behind the recent ‘Zionism is racism’ motion has links to an al-Qaeda terrorist.
Motion passed at conference
Green Party members voted for a motion at their conference in Brighton on Sunday which established as policy that Zionism, the movement to develop and protect a Jewish state in Israel, will be “treated as any other form of racism”.
It also supports the establishment of a “single democratic Palestinian state in all of its historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital”.
Reported links to terrorist
According to The Telegraph, the member behind the motion, Lubna Speitan, is close friends with an al-Qaeda terrorist who plotted to bomb passengers landing at Heathrow from Israel.
The newspaper reports that Ms Speitan offered to give evidence in the defence of Minh Quang Pham, jailed in the US for a plot to detonate a backpack filled with shrapnel dipped in rat poison in the airport arrivals lounge.
Court documents from 2015 reportedly describe them as “close friends” and, when asked by The Telegraph, Ms Speitan is said to have confirmed that is still the case.
Party response
A Green Party spokesperson said they have “internal processes” to investigate when a member expresses views that do not align with the party’s values.
The spokesperson said: “Lubna Speitan holds no party positions other than being a member.
“The Green Party takes all allegations of this nature seriously.
“Where members have expressed views that do not fit in with the party’s values, we have internal processes to investigate.”
By-election context
The ‘Zionism is racism’ vote came just days before the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, which the Green Party’s leader Zack Polanski is running in. Mr Polanski abstained from the vote, having already left the conference to return to campaigning in Sir Keir Starmer’s old constituency.
