Controversial Republican frontrunner under fire for resurrecting rumours long dismissed by US authorities
Donald Trump provoked a fresh backlash on Sunday after repeating claims that thousands of American Muslims publicly celebrated the 9/11 attacks on New York's World Trade Centre, an assertion the authorities have long dismissed as false.
Mr Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 presidential campaign, made the latest in a series of increasingly demagogic statements in a rally in Birmingham, Alabama at the weekend as he amplified his call for surveillance of Muslims who he said might be planning terror attacks.
"I watched when the World Trade Centre came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering," he told Saturday's rally.
He repeated the claim on an appearance on ABC's This Week programme on Sunday, even as George Stephanopoulos, the presenter, contradicted him by saying that police had refuted similar rumours at the time.
"It did happen. I saw it," Mr Trump said. "It was on television. I saw it. There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Centre came down.
"I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down, as those buildings came down. And that tells you something."
Rumours of American Muslims celebrating the 2001 attacks circulated on the internet but were denied by police and religious leaders.
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