ceremony in Benghazi on 23 October, three days after Gaddafi's death. NTC official Ali Tarhouni said on 22 October that he had instructed the military council in Misrata to keep Gaddafi's body preserved for several days in a commercial freezer "to make sure that everybody knows he is dead". Two days later, Tarhouni admitted that there had been human rights abuses in the Battle of Sirte, which he said the NTC condemned, and claimed the executive board "did not want to put an end to that tyrant's life before bringing him to trial and making him answer questions that have always haunted Libyans". A spokesman for the Misrata military council, Fathi Bashagha, stated that the council was confident Gaddafi was dead and that he had died of wounds sustained during fighting before his capture. Saadi Gaddafi, one of Muammar Gaddafi's surviving sons in exile in Niger, said through an attorney that he was "shocked and outraged by vicious brutality" toward his father and his brother, Mutassim, and that the killing showed that the new Libyan leadership could not be trusted to hold fair trials. International reactions Many Western leaders and foreign ministers in Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States made statements hailing Gaddafi's death as a positive development for Libya. The city-state of Vatican City responded to the event by declaring it recognised the National Transitional Council as Libya's legitimate government. World leaders such as Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Australian prime minister Julia Gillard suggested that the death of Gaddafi meant the Libyan Civil War was over. Some officials, such as UK foreign secretary William Hague, expressed disappointment that Gaddafi was not brought back alive and allowed to stand trial. In a candid moment while filming a TV interview, Hillary Clinton, at the time the United States' secretary of state, laughingly stated "We came. We saw. He died." — a variant of a Roman phrase alluding to the swift military victory. Reactions from the governments of countries including Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua were negative. Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez described the former Libyan leader's death as an "assassination" and an "outrage", and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega later called Gaddafi's killing a "crime" during his inauguration on 10 January 2012. Government officials and politicians in Iran showed considerably diverse reactions. The video reportedly left a particularly strong and consequential impression on Russian head of state Vladimir