Andrew Murray, a close adviser to Jeremy Corbyn, wrote that the roots of the 9/11 terror attacks lay in “Zionist colonialism” of the Balfour declaration, the JC can reveal.

In a December 2005 article for the Morning Star - unearthed by investigative journalist Iggy Ostanin - Mr Murray suggested that the attacks were a criminal act rather than an act of war.

He continued: “Even if one considers it a war, only the most Anglo-Saxon-centric commentator could consider it the start of the war.

"For millions around the world, the ‘war’ began with the Anglo-French seizure of Arab lands as the Ottoman empire rotted, with the Balfour declaration in 1917 giving the green light to Zionist colonialism."

This was not the first time Mr Murray connected the 9/11 attacks to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Another Morning Star article by Mr Murray published on September 15, 2001 claimed: “New York is merely the latest battlefield in that new world order…

"The Palestinian people remain among the first victims, their daily torment largely ignored by the world media now weeping over the ruins of the World Trade Centre”.

When Mr Murray considered what moves the US should make in the wake of the attacks, first on his list was “an end to Israeli oppression of the Palestinians and a restoration of their rights”.

The article, published just four days after 9/11, also compared the US government with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

Mr Murray wrote: “Most of those who died were working people who cannot be held responsible for the depredations of their government's foreign policy any more than the thousands of civilians destroyed in Dresden and Hiroshima in 1945 were responsible for Nazism or Japanese imperialism”.

The article, titled 'Reaping the Whirlwind', also contained the lines, “the war that their ruling class has unleashed on the peoples of the world is now haunting them with a vengeance” and “imperialism is the terrorism of the powerful, breeding night and day the revenge of the weak”.

Since Mr Corbyn became leader, Mr Murray has returned to the headlines.

He sparked controversy when he linked the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing to UK foreign policy.

He said he condemned attack "without reservation" but argued British action abroad had "contributed to the environment in which these sorts of atrocities take place".

In March this year, The Times reported that Mr Murray remarked in a 2008 book that “Hitler is uniquely excoriated because his victims were almost all white Europeans”.