George Galloway visits Moscow after picking up Hamas award
George Galloway has appeared in Moscow for Vladimir Putin's Victory Day celebrations, days after flying to Iran to collect an award named after a dead Hamas leader.
The leader of the hard-Left Workers Party of Britain travelled to Tehran this week to collect an award in honour of Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated political leader of Hamas, whom the former MP praised as a 'martyr'.
He boasted during the visit that his most 'treasured' possession was Haniyeh's passport.
Mr Galloway, 70, then travelled to Russia, where he witnessed Putin's military show of strength, which he said was 'moving, emotional, inspiring, humbling'.
He was given the special Martyr Ismail Haniyeh award at a media festival in the Iranian capital.
Haniyeh was the political leader of the terror group at the time of the October 7 attacks on Israel. The International Criminal Court (ICC) intended to apply for a warrant for his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity, but the proceedings were dropped following Haniyeh's assassination in Tehran, which has been blamed on Israel.
Elected as the head of Hamas's political bureau in 2017, Haniyeh was accused by Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor, of being 'criminally responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas, in particular its military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, and other armed groups on 7 October 2023'.
At the ceremony, Mr Galloway said in his acceptance speech, captured on video and posted online: 'I am honoured to receive this award. I actually hold in my safe the passport of the martyr Ismail Haniyeh because when we arrived with one of our convoys to break the siege on Gaza [in 2009], he had promised me a Palestinian passport but they had run out of Palestinian passports. So he gave me his own personal passport and it is one of my most treasured possessions.'
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