Two Green Party candidates arrested over alleged anti-Semitic posts
Saiqa Ali, a Green Party candidate for Lambeth Council in the Streatham St Leonard’s ward, and Sabine Mairey, a candidate for the same council in Clapham Town, were detained on Thursday morning
Two Green Party candidates have been arrested after allegedly posting anti-Semitic comments online.
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Saiqa Ali, a Green Party candidate for Lambeth Council in the Streatham St Leonard’s ward, and Sabine Mairey, a candidate for the same council in Clapham Town, were detained on Thursday morning.
The pair were arrested by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred under Section 19 of the Public Order Act and taken into custody for questioning.
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Ms Ali allegedly posted an image to Instagram of an armed man in a Hamas headband under the slogan “resistance is freedom”.
Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK.
A post by Ms Mairey includes a picture of a man holding a placard that reads “ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism, it’s revenge” above a picture of two children that the post claims were “murdered by Israel”.
She also uploaded an image of Auschwitz and suggested Israel was worse than Nazi Germany, claiming the latter “had to hide what they were doing”.
In several now-deleted Facebook posts, she also claimed that 9/11 was a “false-flag attack” created by Israel and said the Government was over-represented with “Zionist Jews”.
Another post shows an AI-generated image of a Jewish caricature with the caption: “Don’t you know the rules? We went through the Holocaust, and now we get to kill everyone, forever!”.
The two candidates have been arrested under Section 19 of the Public Order Act.
Their arrests come hours after an anti-Semitic terror attack in Golders Green, north London, in which two Jewish men were stabbed.
Ms Ali has previously apologised for her social media comments, in which she claimed Donald Trump is “owned by Jews”.
Sje was also accused of sharing anti-Semitic posts that repeated harmful tropes about Jewish people.
Ms Ali said she “unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism in all its forms”, adding: “My comments were rooted in concern for the humanitarian situation in the Middle East, and I remain committed to speaking with care, responsibility and respect for everyone.”
A Met spokesperson said: "Police have arrested two women, aged 57 and 54, on suspicion of stirring up racial hatred online, an offence under section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986. They remain in police custody.
"The arrests follow an investigation launched after concerns were reported to police on Tuesday, 21 April about antisemitic material that had been posted online."
A Green Party spokesperson said: “This is now a police matter and we are unable to comment at this stage."