The majority of Italians think Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini should not have been executed at the end of World War II, according to a new survey.
Some 51% of the people questioned in the survey said the partisans who captured the fleeing leader in spring 1945 were wrong to put him before a firing squad.
Italians were asked their opinion on Il Duce's fate by RAI state television's Porta a Porta current affairs programme, which put the question in the context of Saddam Hussein's execution last month.
Some 65% of Italians said they also thought Saddam should have been allowed to live.
The answers in both cases reflected the strong opposition to the death penalty among ordinary Italians and their politicians. The Porta a Porta survey found that 77% of Italians were against capital punishment.
Mussolini was executed on April 28, 1945, by order of the National Liberation Committee, a sort of 'government' of the resistance movement.
There has long been debate in Italy over whether the NLC had the right to order the execution.
According to RAI's survey, 32% of Italians think he should at least have been given a proper trial before being shot. A minority of 8% said it was right to execute the Mussolini "because this sort of thing is normal in wartime".
After his execution, Mussolini's body, along with that of his lover Claretta Petacci and a few other officers, were taken to Milan and hung upside down from the roof of a petrol station.
Since the war, Italian governments taken an increasingly strong anti-death penalty stance, presenting moratorium proposals at the UN General Assembly in 1994 and 1995.
Last year MPs approved a cross-party motion urging the government to table another moratorium proposal at the UN but that initiative fell by the wayside amid disagreements with EU partners.
Spurred on by Radicals in his centre-left coalition, Premier Romano Prodi has said Italy will use its new Security Council seat to get a moratorium proposal back on track.
