The Green Party member behind the “
Zionism is racism” motion is close friends with an al-Qaeda terrorist who plotted to bomb passengers landing at Heathrow from Israel.
Lubna Speitan, a British-Palestinian artist, proposed
the controversial motion at the Green Party conference in Brighton, where it was adopted after a vote.
The Left-wing party now formally backs the creation of a single Palestinian state across Israel and deems it “racist” to support the idea of a Jewish homeland in the territory.
It can now be revealed that Ms Speitan offered to testify 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 described them as “close friends”. Asked by The Telegraph whether they remained friends, Ms Speitan said: “Yes, it’s still the case.”
“What was, hasn’t changed,” she said, adding that she believed he had been “targeted” by “the system”.
Ms Speitan proposed the anti-Zionist motion at the Green Party conference on Sunday Credit: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images
Ms Speitan, who joined the Green Party within the past year from Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party, said: “The system has a lot to answer for: systemic racism, anti-Muslim hate and demonising everyone who’s there to resist their colonial oppressors.”
The “Zionism is racism” vote
threatens to derail the Green Party’s chances of winning the by-election in Sir Keir Starmer’s constituency of Holborn and St Pancras.
More than a dozen Labour MPs have reported the Greens to the equality watchdog, saying the vote raised “serious questions”.
Zack Polanski, the Greens’ leader, was criticised for abstaining from the vote and failing to speak out on the matter. He then liked a social-media post relating to criticism of the vote that said: “Get over yourselves and move on.”
The Telegraph approached the Greens with the latest allegations, but was told the party needed time to investigate the matter.
The court documents reviewed by The Telegraph showed Ms Speitan’s offer to testify in defence of Pham.
The Vietnam-born terrorist, whose family were granted asylum in the UK in 1989, planned to target travellers returning from Israel or the US in his Heathrow backpack bomb plot.
The attack could have killed “hundreds of people”, according to US prosecutors. It was thwarted after an armour-piercing bullet was found in Pham’s luggage upon his return, in July 2011, to the UK from Yemen, where he had joined al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (
AQAP).
A spokesman for the Green Party said the court documents were old and did not suggest anything illegal. They added that Ms Speitan was just a party member and held no formal position.
When asked about her relationship with Pham, Ms Speitan first described the question as “insulting” and said it had “no relation to the work that I’m doing”.
She described The Telegraph’s approach as part of “mainstream media” attacks that aimed to “demonise” Palestinians, before suggesting Pham had been wrongfully accused.
On the subject of Pham’s 44-year sentence, Ms Speitan replied: “People are demonised for all sorts of things and wrongfully accused of all sorts of things.”
She said the questions surrounding her relationship with Pham were a “character assassination”.
Minh Quang Pham is serving a decades-long sentence in a US prison for terrorism offences
Pham was jailed last year after admitting that he had planned to kill hundreds of people in a suicide attack on Heathrow, dropping his earlier claim that he had never intended to follow through with the plot.
British police released Pham in 2011 after the discovery of the bullet in his luggage, but MI5 kept him under watch. Subsequent police raids on his home discovered that he was watching videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, the AQAP leader credited with radicalising a generation of Westerners.
In 2015, Pham was extradited to the US to face charges of terrorism.
Ms Speitan, who argued that
Hamas should not be deemed a terrorist group and called for Zionists to be “hunted down”, agreed to testify that Pham was a peaceful man with cognitive limitations, according to court documents filed by the terrorist’s defence lawyer in 2015.
Her testimony was expected to boost an insanity defence and claims that Pham suffered from bipolar disorder.
In their court submission, the defence claimed Ms Speitan was a “close friend” of Pham’s and said they had contacted her to confirm she was willing to testify.
Prosecutors urged the judge to reject the request, as Ms Speitan’s proposed testimony had little relevance to establishing the facts of whether or not he had joined AQAP in Yemen and taken part in terrorism training.
They also noted that all five witnesses proposed by the defence had refused to travel to New York, meaning that they would not be subject to the same “pressure” to tell the truth.
Ms Speitan said she had a medical condition that left her unable to fly.
The judge in the southern district of New York court rejected the defence’s request to call any of the five witnesses, casting doubt on their reasons for not travelling and the relevance of the proposed testimony.
In January 2016, Pham pleaded guilty. He admitted membership of AQAP and helping the terrorist group produce Inspire, its English-language propaganda magazine.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda leader, advised Pham on the foiled Heathrow attack Credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images/Tracy Woodward
However, he claimed that the Heathrow plot was only a “ruse” to escape Yemen. FBI interrogations in which he discussed the plot were not recorded, hurting the prosecution’s case.
In May 2016, he was sentenced to 40 years’ imprisonment. Months earlier, Ms Speitan had appealed to the judge to have the “whole case dismissed”, according to a letter seen by the Jewish Chronicle.
Ms Speitan called Pham “one of the kindest, honest, most sincere, trustworthy and respectful people I have ever known”.
In 2017, US investigators found a laptop containing videos of the British national testing bombs, proclaiming his desire for martyrdom, and pressing a detonator linked to his backpack, while smiling at the camera.
Also on the laptop was a six-page document titled Your Instructions, written to Pham by Awlaki in 2011, months before the latter was killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
The document advised Pham to wait until Christmas or the New Year before carrying out his Heathrow attack.
“Imagine this IED [improvised explosive device] as a shotgun that is firing in all directions,” Awlaki wrote, before offering instructions on how to poison the shrapnel.
After the discovery of the new evidence, Pham admitted he had planned to kill hundreds of people at Heathrow. He was resentenced to 44 years in 2025.
‘Massive betrayal’ to Britain
In a handwritten letter to the US judge before his sentencing, Pham wrote last year: “What I did was a massive betrayal to my country of Britain and a massive disservice to Islam, my family and the British people.”
He added: “I can never thank the British people enough for accepting my family and I into the United Kingdom… and providing us with full welfare and housing.”
The family had lived in a refugee camp in Vietnam before fleeing to the UK via Hong Kong. They were granted asylum and a home in south London.
Earlier this week, Ms Speitan hailed the passage of her Green Party motion as a victory in the face of those that aim to “dehumanise and demonise those who dare to resist their oppressors”.
Ms Speitan said she joined the Green Party from
Mr Corbyn’s Your Party to push for the rejection of common standards of anti-Semitism.
Ms Speitan told The Telegraph that 56 members of her family had been killed in Gaza. She urged the press to focus on “the [Israel Defense Forces], who could be our neighbours, and walk the streets with impunity while destroying our families”.
The “Zionism is racism” motion has roiled the Green Party and wider British politics.
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Vivien Lichtenstein, the head of the Jewish Greens, said the motion would not help Palestinians on the ground and that she was considering leaving the party.
“There are certainly some anti-Semites in the party,” said Ms Lichtenstein, adding that she meant in the party’s lower ranks rather than the leadership.
Mr Polanski had called for the motion to be amended to safeguard Jewish party members who attend Zionist synagogues. The vote blocked the amendment.
Ms Speitan said: “We shouldn’t need as Palestinians to have a disclaimer before we speak for the liberation of our people every time that we’re not anti-Semites, or to legitimise our cause by saying it’s not an attack against Jews, which indeed it’s not.”
A spokesman for the Green Party said: “Lubna holds no party positions other than being a member and any member can submit policy motions. The referenced court document does not suggest or evidence any illegality and is a decade old.”
Later, when The Greens became aware that Ms Speitan stood by her friendship with Pham, they issued an updated response which stated: “Where members have expressed views that do not fit in with the party’s values, we have internal processes to investigate.”
