PRIME MINISTER:
I saw the press conference like everybody else and then about half past one this morning President Bush rang me to fill me in on some of the other details and we talked for a few minutes about how significant an event it was. It really is a tremendous morale boost and a quite decisive moment in the long struggle for the Iraqi people for their liberty.
MEYER:
So what was your first reaction? What was your first reaction when you heard?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I felt exhilarated that it had happened because this man has been casting a long and brutal shadow over the Iraqi people and the Middle East for 35 years. It's not easy for people like us who live in a democracy and take it for granted, to understand the sense of intimidation and apprehension that the Iraqi people must have felt. Even though his regime had been toppled, while he was still roaming free there was always a worry that he would come back, he'd come back to torture and kill them the way he had done so to hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen.
MEYER:
I suppose the key question now is what happens to him. What do you believe should happen to him? Where should he be tried? How should he be tried?
PRIME MINISTER:
He should be tried, in my opinion, in Iraq. The crimes he has committed have been principally, but not only, against the Iraqi people. It should be a public trial and all the detail of what he has done should be put on display so the world is reminded again indelibly and irrevocably of what a brutal, cruel man he has been.
MEYER:
Do you support the death penalty for him, if it came to that?
PRIME MINISTER:
It's a matter of Iraqi law. If it's judged by the Iraqi people, then I won't raise any objection.
[ends]