A memorial wreath in his hand, Jeremy Corbyn stands feet from the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich Massacre.
The picture was among a number taken during a service to honour Palestinian ‘martyrs’.
Buried in the cemetery in Tunisia are members of Black September, the terror group which massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
Tribute: Jeremy Corbyn pictured in 2014 holding a wreath at a cemetery in Tunis. Sources close to Mr Corbyn insisted he was at the service to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985
But on a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured – instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members
The air strike victim’s monument, containing the 47 names of Palestinians killed in 1985
One picture places Mr Corbyn close to the grave of another terrorist, Atef Bseiso, intelligence chief of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.
Bseiso has also been linked to the Munich atrocity. Another image shows the Labour leader apparently joining in an Islamic prayer while by the graves.
Last night sources close to Mr Corbyn insisted he was at the service in 2014 to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985.
But on a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured – and in a different part of the complex.
Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members.
Images from the Palestinian Embassy Website archive, Jeremy Corbyn is seen in Tunisia at the Martyrs Cemetary on a hill in Hamman Chatt laying wreaths with members of a Palestinian Conference delegation
Another image shows the Labour leader apparently joining in an Islamic prayer while by the graves
The plaque honours three dead men: Salah Khalaf, who founded Black September; his key aide Fakhri al-Omari; and Hayel Abdel-Hamid, PLO chief of security.
Adjacent to their graves is that of Bseiso. All were assassinated either by the Israeli secret service Mossad or rival Palestinian factions.
With his party engulfed in a row over anti-Semitism, the pictures give Mr Corbyn fresh questions to answer about his alleged sympathy for extremists.
Corbyn with Palestinian politician Mohammad Shtayyeh (second from left) and Palestinian Ambassador to France Salman Harfi (third from left)
‘It beggars belief that anyone would wish to honour the terrorists behind the brutal massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at Munich,’ said Jennifer Gerber, director of Labour Friends of Israel.
‘However, it is sadly utterly unsurprising that Jeremy Corbyn appears to have done so. Others will rightly regard it is as totally sickening.’
In other developments:
- A video surfaced showing Mr Corbyn apparently making a direct comparison between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Nazi occupation of Europe;
- A Labour ex-minister took out a full-page advert in a Jewish newspaper to lambast Mr Corbyn’s response to the anti-Semitism crisis. Jim Murphy said it had been ‘intellectually arrogant, emotionally inept and politically maladroit’;
- The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned Mr Corbyn to ‘come out of hiding’ and said the anti-Semitism crisis would not go away.
Mr Corbyn recorded his visit to the Tunisian cemetery – a year before he became Labour leader – in an article for the communist newspaper, the Morning Star.
He said wreaths were laid to mark the 1985 bombing but also ‘on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents’.
TERROR TRAIL THAT STARTED AT OLYMPICS
Sept 5, 1972
Eight Palestinian terrorists from the Black September group storm the Munich apartments where Israeli athletes are sleeping, killing two and taking nine hostage.
File photo shows a member of the Palestinian terrorist group who seized members of the Israeli Olympic team at their quarters at the Munich Olympic Village on September 5, 1972
When the terrorists and hostages were taken by helicopter to a military airport, German sharpshooters opened fire, killing three terrorists. A gun battle claimed the lives of all nine hostages and two terrorists.
The remains of the helicopter which was used by Arab guerillas to escape from the Olympic village with 11 Israeli hostages. The helicopter was destroyed in a gun battle with German police
Daily Mail’s coverage of the Munich Massacre a day after the helicopter was shot down, which resulted in five terrorists and all eleven athletes being killed
Oct 1, 1985
Israeli warplanes bomb the PLO headquarters in Hammam Chott, near Tunis, killing 47.
Jan 15, 1991
PLO second-in-command Salah Khalaf, his adviser Fakhri al-Omari, and PLO security chief Hayel Abdel-Hamid are shot to death at Abdel-Hamid’s home in Tunis.
Jun 8, 1992
Atef Bseiso, the PLO’s head of intelligence, is shot in Paris. It was reported he was killed because he helped to plan the Munich Massacre.
Sep 30, 2014
Jeremy Corbyn attends a conference on the future of Palestine in Tunisia. It is also attended by Hamas.
Oct 1, 2014
Mr Corbyn visits the Cemetery of the Martyrs of Palestine, on the outskirts of Tunis.
In an article for the Morning Star about the visit, he writes: ‘Wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day (at Hammam Chott) and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991.’
May 28, 2017
The Sunday Times reports that Mr Corbyn had attended a wreath-laying ceremony at Bseiso’s grave. Mr Corbyn denies this.
He wrote: ‘After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991, we moved to the poignant statue in the main avenue of the coastal town of Ben Arous, which was festooned with Palestinian and Tunisian flags.’
There appears to be no record of Mossad having carried out an assassination in Paris in 1991. However, Khalaf, Abdul-Hamid and al-Omari were assassinated that year. Mossad is accused of killing Bseiso in Paris in 1992.
Controversy over Mr Corbyn’s visit became an issue during last year’s general election.
He insisted he was not honouring Bseiso, adding: ‘I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that Palestinian conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.
‘And I was accompanied by very many other people who were at a conference searching for peace. The only way we achieve peace is by bringing people together and talking to them.’
Atef Bsesio (left) was the head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organisation before his assassination outside a Paris hotel in 1992. In the years after his death, it was widely reported that he was killed because he helped to plan the Munich Massacre in 1972. On the night of his death, Bseiso returned from a late dinner with two friends to his luxury hotel in the French capital where he had registered under an assumed name. Lying in wait were two assassins, who fired three bullets into his head on a dark street. Hayel Abdel-Hamid (right) was chief of security of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. He was a close adviser to Salah Khalaf, and the pair were killed in an attack in Abdel-Hamid’s home in Tunis in 1991
Salah Khalaf (left) is widely believed to have masterminded the Munich Massacre. He created the Black September terror group which carried out the 1972 attack. Khalaf, better known by the nom de guerre Abu Iyad, went on to become Yasser Arafat’s second-in-command in the PLO. In January 1991, he was gunned down in the Tunisian capital of Tunis. Fakhri Al-Omari (right) was a senior member of Black September and was also implicated in the Munich Massacre. He was a close adviser to Khalaf and was killed in the same attack in Tunis in 1991
However, the pictures obtained by the Mail – and posted on the Facebook page of the Palestinian embassy in Tunisia – directly place Mr Corbyn by the graves of Bseiso and the Black September leaders.
He is seen standing under a distinctive red canopy with a corrugated steel roof. This canopy runs alongside the graves of the Munich-linked men.
Mr Corbyn is clearly pictured holding a wreath and seemingly praying by the distinctive plaque that honours Khalaf, Abdel-Hamid and al-Omari.
Their graves are apart from the 60 or so others in the cemetery and the plaque honouring the victims of the 1985 Israeli air strike.
The Corbyn source maintained that the service attended by the Labour leader was ‘a Palestinian commemoration for those killed in the bombing in Tunis’, even when presented with the photographs showing him in a different area of the cemetery.
The source insisted that the pictures did not contradict Mr Corbyn’s statements. And the insider said the picture showing Mr Corbyn apparently joining in a prayer was simply of him ‘copying the others out of respect’.
However, Gideon Falter, of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘A responsible politician would not have gone anywhere near that ceremony, but Mr Corbyn is not a responsible politician.
Given Mr Corbyn’s history of defending, honouring and befriending anti-Semites, including genocidal anti-Semitic terrorists, this latest revelation adds to the deeply disturbing evidence that the leader of the opposition is a longstanding ally of those who wish us great harm.’
Mr Corbyn’s remark comparing the Israelis with Nazis came in video from an event in 2013. It is controversial because the globally-accepted definition of anti-Semitism says it is anti-Semitic to compare the actions of the Israeli government with those of the Nazis.