Blair Criticises Manner of Saddam Execution

The way in which Saddam Hussein was executed was "completely wrong", Tony Blair said tonight in his first public comment on the subject.

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference with Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Mr Blair also stressed that the manner of Saddam's execution should not "blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people".

The prime minister, who was on holiday in Florida at the time of Saddam's execution on December 30, has faced criticism for his subsequent silence. Mobile phone footage shot at the execution showed the former Iraqi dictator facing sectarian taunts before his death.

A week ago, when the mobile phone footage emerged, Mr Blair's deputy, John Prescott, condemned the events as "deplorable". At the time Downing Street said Mr Blair backed an inquiry into the circumstances of the execution called by Iraq's government but refused to specifically endorse Mr Prescott's comments.

After the chancellor, Gordon Brown, used a television interview at the weekend to echo Mr Prescott's line, Downing Street issued a new statement calling the circumstances of the execution "wrong and unacceptable".

Today, Mr Blair said his stance had remained consistent.

"As has been very obvious from the comments of other ministers and indeed from my own official spokesman, the manner of the execution of Saddam was completely wrong," he said.

"But that should not blind us to the crimes he committed against his own people, including the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, one million causalities in the Iran/Iraq war and the use of chemical weapons against his own people, wiping out entire villages.

"So the crimes that Saddam committed does not excuse the manner of his execution but the manner of his execution does not excuse the crimes.

"Now I think that is a perfectly sensible position that most people would reasonably accept."

Pressed again on the subject, Mr Blair said that the manner of Saddam's execution was "wrong and unacceptable".

He added: "But we should bear in mind and not allow that while saying it's wrong then to lurch into a position of forgetting the victims of Saddam, the people who he killed deliberately as an act of policy, hundreds of thousands of them in Iraq.

"So of course any sensible, moderate person makes those points about the scenes that we have seen, about the execution, but it should not be then translated into some sort of excuse for the crimes he committed against his own people."