Palestinian 'tortured' for calling Blair terrorist

A Palestinian man has told Press TV that he was tortured after he was arrested for verbally protesting against Tony Blair's Mideast policy.

Ali Hamdan, who was arrested for calling Middle East quartet envoy, Tony Blair, a "terrorist" on Tuesday during his visit to a mosque in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil (Hebron), says he was tortured by the Palestinian Authority intelligence service.

Hamdan says PA security forces violently removed him from the mosque and beat him and verbally abused him while interrogating him for several hours.

The 23-year old engineer told Press TV that his remarks had nothing to do with Blair' steadfast support for Israel, but were merely directed at his Islamophobic and warmongering policies. Hamdan believes any oppressed Muslim in his place would do the same.

"It was a spontaneous reaction to seeing this war criminal enter the Holy place. I didn't do it as a Palestinian nationalist, but rather as a Muslim who has been deeply offended by the huge crimes that Blair committed against Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine", Hamdan said.

"I think I was reflecting the feelings and views of the vast majority of Muslims. After all, this is the man whose policies led to the destruction of two sovereign Muslim countries and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. He is more than a war criminal. He is satanic", he continued.

Blair is widely despised by many Arabs for supporting the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and for declining to speak out against Israel's 2006 war against the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah, while he was Britain's prime minister.

Hamdan was freed after a ten-hour interrogation and the signing of a pledge stating that he wouldn't indulge in such behavior again.