Lubna Speitan - Al-Qaeda Supporter Friend
One of the signs during a Free Palestine protest activity reads: 'Jews for a Free Palestine' Mohammed Abubakr/Pexels

The person behind the 'Zionism is racism' motion adopted by the Green Party has been identified as a 'close friend' of a convicted Al-Qaeda supporter, according to US court documents.

Lubna Speitan proposed the controversial motion on Sunday, 4 October 2026, during the Green Party of England and Wales Autumn Annual Conference in Brighton. The motion was subsequently adopted by party members by 1,022 votes to 813.

According to court documents reported by the media, Speitan offered to testify as a defence witness in the case of Minh Quang Pham in 2015. Pham was later convicted of terrorism offences linked to his support for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and was sentenced to 44 years in US federal prison in 2025.

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Following the historic vote by Green Party members on a motion describing Zionism as racism, Lubna Speitan, who authored the motion, said: “The conference has spoken, and this motion unifies us against racism.”

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Who Is Lubna Speitan?

Speitan is a British-Palestinian contemporary artist. She recently set aside her creative juices to focus on her activism. Her final exhibition was held in December 2025 in London.

'For more than two years, Lubna has set aside her painting to lead grassroots activism, responding to the genocide in Palestine and the slaughter of her own relatives by the Israeli state,' the press release for the 2025 exhibition read.

Proceeds from the sale of her work were used to fund her Palestine-focused grassroots campaign. She has been using her voice, as a Palestinian in diaspora, to talk about what she describes as genocide in Palestine.

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Ties to Al-Qaeda Supporter

Speitan has been in the spotlight recently because of the Green Party conference where she proposed a motion to recognise Zionism as a form of racism. Her name was then found in court documents related to Pham.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Speitan wrote a letter dated February 2016 to the court, describing Pham. 'Minh really is one of the few people I regard with such high respect and esteem... he turned out to be one of the kindest, honest, most sincere, trustworthy and respectful people I have ever known.'

Speitan was reportedly willing to testify in Pham's defence while also pleading with the US court to dismiss the case. Pham is a Vietnamese-born British national who was detained at Heathrow Airport in July 2011 after returning from Yemen, where he had received training from AQAP (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula).

He was found in possession of a live round of 7.62mm armour-piercing ammunition. He was later arrested in the UK in June 2012 and extradited to the US in 2015. He pleaded guilty to terrorism offences in 2016 and was initially sentenced to 40 years in prison. Following later legal proceedings, he was sentenced to 44 years in February 2025.

There is no suggestion that Speitan knew of Pham's criminal activity or terrorist affiliation at the time they knew each other.

Green Party Reaction

The Green Party had no reaction to Speitan's alleged friendship with Pham but clarified that the artist doesn't hold any position in the party other than being a member. The political organisation also said that it 'takes all allegations of this nature seriously.'

The motion she proposed reads in part: 'Zionism is a political ideology which called for the creation—and, now it exists, the continuity—of an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.'

The party adopted the motion by 1,022 votes in favor to 813 votes against.

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