// BBC UK NEWS — CRONACA
Green member behind Zionism motion named as 'close friend' of jailed al-Qaeda supporter in court
Lubna Speitan gave evidence on behalf of a British national who was accused of plotting to carry out a suicide attack at Heathrow Airport
The Green Party member behind a motion which declared Zionism to be racism was named in court documents as a "close friend" of a man who was jailed after being accused of plotting a suicide bomb attack at Heathrow Airport.
Lubna Speitan, a British-Palestinian artist, proposed the Green conference motion defining Zionism as an ideology supporting "an ethnonationalist Jewish state".
Court documents from 2015 show she offered to testify as a defence witness in the trial of Minh Quang Pham, who was jailed for 40 years in the US after pleading guilty to supporting al-Qaeda. He denied planning a suicide attack.
The BBC has contacted Speitan for comment. The Green Party said she holds no official positions and the party "takes all allegations of this nature seriously".
The motion proposed by Speitan, which was passed on Sunday to become party policy, called for a "single democratic Palestinian state in all of historic Palestine", which includes modern-day Israel.
In response, Israel banned Green leader Zack Polanski from entering the country. while Jewish groups described it as an "attack" on their community and some Labour and Lib Dem MPs reported the party to Great Britain's equality watchdog.
Speitan argued its backers wanted to voice opposition to "racist systems of oppression".
On Tuesday, it emerged she wrote a letter in 2016 to the New York judge in the Pham case describing him as "one of the kindest, honest, most sincere" people she had known.
The existence of the letter was first reported by the Jewish Chronicle, external and it has been seen by BBC News.