A year of denials
Pressure grows on Labour leader to explain his laying of a wreath beside grave of Black September terrorist
WHEN Jeremy Corbyn was first accused of laying a wreath beside the grave of a terrorist involved in the 1972 Munich massacre, his response was unequivocal. “Absolutely not,” he retorted in May last year, when asked if he had honoured Atef Bseiso, a prominent Palestinian allegedly assassinated by Israeli operatives in Paris in 1992. “I was at a Palestinian conference...we were searching for peace in the Middle East.”
Mr Corbyn was responding to the extraordinary claim that 12 months before being appointed leader of the Labour Party, he joined a delegation of Palestinian officials at a ceremony which included tributes to members of the Black September Organisation.
The group was responsible for the assassination of a Jordanian prime minister and, most notably, the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympic Games.
Bseiso, head of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), was regarded as one of the planners of the Munich massacre, during which eight heavily armed terrorists took hostages in a bid to secure the release of 234 Palestinians jailed in Israel. Two were killed in the initial struggle and the remainder died in a bungled rescue attempt.
Golda Meir, who was then Israel’s premier, ordered Israeli agents to hunt down and kill those responsible, a mission that took 20 years to complete.
Among the last to be assassinated were four men who now lie buried side by side at the Palestine National Cemetery in Tunis. They include Salah Khalaf, the group’s founder, shot dead in Tunis in 1991, and Bseiso, executed in Paris in 1992. All four are believed to have been killed by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.
In 2014, the Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn decided to visit their final resting place. He was photographed holding up a large wreath next to their graves, but insists to this day he was not “involved” in laying it.
Details of his trip first appeared in The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Times during last year’s general election campaign. He insisted that his visit had been to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed by the Israeli bombing of the PLO Tunisia HQ in 1985, a raid ordered by the Israeli cabinet. A monument to those killed in Tunis stands in the same cemetery.
Mr Corbyn’s denial that he laid a wreath on the Black September graves was undermined by an article he wrote for the Morning Star at the time. It reiterated that wreaths were laid for the 1985 casualties but said others were laid “on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991”. The reference is confusing, not least because there is no known account of a Palestinian activist being assassinated in Paris during that year.
Many now believe that the throwaway reference was the first admission, however inadvertent, that the delegation had indeed paid their respects beside Bseiso’s grave.
The controversy was quickly swept aside, only to re-emerge this week when the Daily Mail uncovered images from the ceremony. They show the Labour leader holding a wreath in front of a plaque dedicated to members of Black September and just feet from Bseiso’s grave. The 1985 monument, which Mr Corbyn had insisted was his sole reason for being there, was some 15 yards away.
His spokesman said he had been at “a Palestinian commemoration for those killed in the bombing in Tunis”.
Other pictures show him joining the delegation in an Islamic prayer, which a spokesman said had involved him “copying the others out of respect”.
‘He was photographed holding up a large wreath next to their graves, but insists to this day he was not “involved” in laying it’
Facing a fresh backlash and reeling after weeks of division over Labour’s anti-semitism crisis, a spokesman for Mr Corbyn on Saturday reiterated that the commemoration was for those killed in Tunis and insisted the images did not contradict earlier statements.
The explanation did little to pacify members of Britain’s Jewish community, and within 24 hours Mr Corbyn was under attack from two widows of murdered Munich athletes.
Accusing the Labour leader of “maliciousness, cruelty and stupidity”, Ankie Spitzer and Ilana Romano said they had no recollection of him visiting their husbands’ graves, adding that he would be “judged by the company you keep”.
Labour’s press team claimed the widows had been “misled” because “Jeremy did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings. He and other parliamentarians went to the...cemetery to remember the victims of the 1985 Israeli bombing of the PLO headquarters, many of whom were civilians”.
The apparent contradictions between Labour’s official line, the photographs, and Mr Corbyn’s own newspaper column were obvious, but Mr Corbyn still refused to back down.
Yesterday morning, his spokesman said that by saying “wreaths were also laid” Mr Corbyn had been using “a passive voice” in the Morning Star article, and was referring to other people laying wreaths.
Shortly after midday, Mr Corbyn
‘The apparent contradictions between Labour’s official line, the photographs, and Mr Corbyn’s newspaper column were obvious’
finally appeared to acknowledge verbally, for the first time, that the service had included a tribute to the Black September members.
He told Sky News: “A wreath was indeed laid by some of those who were at the conference to those who were killed in Paris in 1992. I was present when it was laid. I don’t think I was actually involved in [laying] it. I was there because I wanted to see a fitting memorial to everyone who has died in every terrorist incident everywhere because we have to end it.”
While Mr Corbyn’s critics last night seized on his comments as a longawaited confession, what he said notably failed to mention Black September or Bseiso, and leaves the door open to yet more obfuscation.