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LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair broke his silence on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's hanging on Tuesday, calling the manner of the execution "unacceptable" and "wrong".
Other ministers in Blair's government had condemned the way Saddam was hanged, but Blair had not spoken out publicly until now, despite rising pressure to do so.
In unofficial video footage posted on the internet, several men could be heard taunting Saddam as hangmen in black balaclavas slipped the noose around his neck.
"As everybody saw, the manner of the execution is unacceptable and it's wrong, but we should ... not allow that ... then to lurch into a position of forgetting the victims of Saddam, the people that he killed deliberately," Blair told a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
- REUTERS
