Premier’s Mussolini Remarks Draw Fire
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said fascist dictator Benito Mussolini never killed anyone, provoking outrage in Italy’s Jewish community and opposition party demands for an apology.
Berlusconi later said he had been reacting to a comparison of Mussolini to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein but “never intended to reevaluate Mussolini.”
Mussolini ruled from 1922 to 1943, launching bloody colonial wars in Africa before allying with the Nazis. One biographer estimates at least 1 million people died under his rule, including thousands of Jews.
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