BICOM

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn spoke on a discussion panel in 2012 with senior Hamas officials who had been convicted for murder and terrorism offences.

The Telegraph reported that the Labour leader hosted a panel discussion with senior Hamas officials including then Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who is subject to UK sanctions, former head of Hamas’s military wing, Husam Badran, and convicted terrorist Dr Abdul Aziz Umar.

Badran was given a 17-year sentence for his involvement in the bombing of the Dolphinarium Discotheque in Tel Aviv that killed 21 people and the Sbarro Pizza restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people. Both attacks were carried out during the Second Intifada between 2001 and 2002. Abdul Aziz Umar was given seven life sentences for taking part in the 2003 Café Hillel suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem, which killed seven people and wounded 70 others. Both were released from Israeli prison as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011.

The Telegraph quoted Badran saying on the panel chaired by the Labour leader, described as a “seminar on Palestinian refugees in the Arab world” that “the return will only be viable through military and armed resistance and nothing else”.

Corbyn acknowledged in his regular column in the Morning Star after the event that he had listened to speeches given by men who had been released “in return for the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit,” adding that “their contribution was fascinating and electrifying”. Corbyn reportedly told Iranian news channel Press TV after the conference: “I met many of the brothers, including the brother who’s been speaking here… when I was in Doha earlier this year.”

Last week the Times published a picture of Corbyn meeting Maher al Taher, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), at a 2014 commemoration ceremony for the Black September members who took part in the 1972 killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The meeting was only weeks before PLFP members carried out an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which six people were killed including a British Rabbi.