Mayor of friendship city in the Middle East 'is a convicted terrorist'

Preston City Council has defended a decision to hold talks with a Palestinian politician over a planned friendship agreement - even after it emerged that he is a convicted terrorist.

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The authority agreed in June to pursue the tie-up with the city of Hebron, in the West Bank, as “a symbol of...support” for the people of Palestine and “the wider Middle East”.

It insists the arrangement is not a show of political backing for any individual - and stresses that Preston will become one of dozens of places around the world to have a similar agreement with the city.

However, the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester and Region [JRC] has now written to town hall chiefs in Preston urging them to withdraw an invitation to Hebron mayor Tayseer Abu Sneineh to join a planned online meeting of a working group set up to formalise the friendship deal.

When he took up his post in the city back in 2017, The Times of Israel reported that Abu Sneineh had been convicted for his role in an attack in Hebron in 1980, in which six Israeli settlers were killed and 16 wounded while returning home from Sabbath prayers.

The paper reported that the now mayor - then a 26-year-old teacher - was “convicted as one of the gunmen and sentenced to life in prison”.

However, he was released three years later in a prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).