JEREMY CORBYN has confirmed that United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese will take part in the Gaza Tribunal, which he will host next month.

The two-day inquiry will hear a host of evidence from experts and eyewitnesses in an effort to establish the truth of what has happened in Gaza, Britain’s role in the genocide, what Britain’s legal responsibilities are and whether it has lived up to them.

The tribunal was launched by Mr Corbyn’s Peace & Justice Project after his bid via a private members’ Bill to force an official independent inquiry into Britain’s role in Gaza was blocked by the government at the second reading last month.

Interviewed by musician Calum Baird as part of the Edinburgh Festival, Mr Corbyn said on Saturday that the tribunal would seek answers on Britain’s continuing role as a supplier of arms and intelligence to invading Israeli forces, including the use of the RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus.  

He said: “What we’ve done through the Peace & Justice Project is set up a two-day open public inquiry on September 4 and 5 in Church House in Westminster. We’ve invited people to make submissions, lawyers and others and voices from Gaza and the West Bank and other places — in order to put forward their view on the policy.”

Confirming that the UN’s special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories was “very keen to support it and get involved” in a process he compared to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, the former Labour leader said: “Francesca Albanese has agreed to take part and put forward her view on the legality of it.”

Turning to his work to found a new party — presently dubbed “Your Party” — he reiterated his view that the new formation’s operations in Scotland should be autonomous and be rooted in community activism rather than any attempt to recreate the party that he had led for five years.

Mr Corbyn, who arrived at the festival event fresh from a meeting of the Sighthill People’s Assembly, a gathering of residents, trade unionists and activists in one of Scotland’s most deprived communities, said: “I don’t see it as a top-down party, I don’t see it as a conventional political party: I see it much more as a community-based political activity.”