Jeremy Corbyn has prompted a storm for saying it was a 'tragedy' that Osama bin Laden was killed instead of being put on trial. The Labour leadership frontrunner made his comments on the Iranian government's news channel Press TV after the al Qaeda chief was killed in 2011. He said the US special forces raid showed Barack Obama was a 'Pentagon President' and questioned whether it really happened, saying: "There's something fishy here." He added the killing was 'yet another tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy'. Now his words - and whether he was misquoted - have become the focus of furious debate between Mr Corbyn's backers and foes. A spokesman for Mr Corbyn said he was "a total opponent of al Qaeda, all it stands for". But Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said Mr Corbyn was "utterly wrong". "Bin Laden's death was not a tragedy," he said, adding the real tragedy was 'the 2,977 who died' in the 9/11 attacks. He added: "We remember them". And Tory ex-defence secretary Liam Fox told The Sun: "Corbyn might want to think about the lives lost on 9/11... They were tragedies. "If the Labour Party elect someone with so little moral compass they will be confined to the dustbin of political history and deservedly so.” It's the latest of Mr Corbyn's foreign policy statements in the past to be put under the microscope. Yesterday his views that Argentina and Britain could share power in the Falklands were condemned as 'ignorant' by wounded veteran Simon Weston. And he's previously hit out at the 'hysteria' and 'deliberate misrepresentation' as the battle for Labour leader rolls on. It also came as George Osborne claimed Mr Corbyn would be a national security threat by vowing to scrap the nuclear missile system Trident. The Chancellor - who's announced a £500m cash boost to the Trident base - attacked an "an unholy alliance of Labour's left-wing insurgents and the Scottish nationalists". The SNP is also opposed to renewing the system at the Faslane naval base on the River Clyde. Today Andy Burnham will insist he can still convince enough Corbyn voters over to his side to win the Labour leadership race on September 10. He will tell backers in Pudsey, West Yorkshire: "The Tory press are so desperate for Jeremy Corbyn to win that they're making up stories to give the impression that he already has." "I think everyone should be put on trial. I also profoundly disagree with the death penalty under any circumstances for anybody, that's my own view. "But the point you were making about the gunpowder plot is absolutely spot on. "When Charles I was executed his head was displayed. Cromwell died and was then dug up and executed by the incoming regime, the return of the monarchy, just to prove he was dead. "And so we have this Medieval triumphalism around this which I find quite strange. "But the President has to explain why he's not confirming evidence of the death, why the burial at sea if there was indeed a burial at sea, and if it was Bin Laden. Because Bin Laden may well have been dead a year or two for all we know. "Obama has very rapidly morphed into a Pentagon President just like all the others in that he's increased the number of prison places at Bagram, he's failed to close Guantanamo Bay, and as I understand it the Pakistan government knew absolutely nothing about this raid. "They probably watched it on CNN like the rest of them and found out about it at that stage. "On top of the regular drone attacks that are going on with all the killing that comes with that, Obama seems not to be able to understand the lessons of history. "I can't answer the question of why. We can only guess that there's something fishy here. "Either Bin Laden wasn't there, therefore there has to be a story, or the pictures are very gory, or they show something else such as that he was unarmed and was shot, as may well be. "On this there was no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him, to put him on trial, to go through that process. "This was an assassination attempt and is yet another tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy. "The World Trade Centre was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. "Tens of thousands of people have died, torture has come back onto the world stage, been canonised virtually into law by Guantanamo and Bagram. "Can't we learn some lessons from this? Are we just going to descend deeper and deeper... "The next stage will be an attempted assassination on Gaddafi and so it will go on. "And this will just make the world more dangerous and worse and worse and worse.

• published: 31 Aug 2015
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