BAGHDAD — The Iraqi television reporter who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush was kidnapped once by militants and, separately, detained briefly by the U.S. military.
Over time, Muntadar al-Zeidi, a 29-year-old unmarried Shiite, came to hate both the U.S. military occupation and Iran’s interference in Iraq, his family told The Associated Press on Monday.
Al-Zeidi’s act of defiance Sunday transformed an obscure reporter from a minor TV station into a national hero to many Iraqis fed up with the nearly six-year U.S. presence, but also fearful that their country will fall under Iran’s influence once the Americans leave.
A day after the incident, al-Zeidi’s three brothers and one sister gathered in al-Zeidi’s simple, one-bedroom apartment in west Baghdad. The home was decorated with a poster of Latin American revolutionary leader Che Guevara, who is widely lionized in the Middle East.
Family members expressed bewilderment over al-Zeidi’s action and concern about his treatment while in Iraqi custody.
But they also expressed pride over his defiance of an American president who many Iraqis believe has destroyed their country.
“I swear to Allah, he is a hero,” said his sister, who goes by the nickname Umm Firas (mother of Firas, her oldest son), as she watched a replay of her brother’s attack on an Arabic satellite station. “May Allah protect him.”
Al-Zeidi joined Al Baghdadia television in September 2005 after graduating from Baghdad University with a degree in communications.
Two years later, he was seized by gunmen while on an assignment in a Sunni district of north Baghdad.
He was freed unharmed three days later after Iraqi television stations broadcast appeals for his release. At the time, al-Zeidi told reporters he did not know who kidnapped him or why, but his family blamed al-Qaeda and said no ransom was paid.
In January, he was taken again, this time arrested by American soldiers who searched his apartment building, his brother Dhirgham said. He was released the next day with an apology, the brother said.
Those experiences helped mold a deep resentment of both the American military’s presence in Iraq and Iran’s pervasive influence over Iraq’s cleric-dominated Shiite community, according to his family.
“He hates the American physical occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation,” Dhirgham said, alluding to the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite clerics in political and social life. “As for Iran, he considers the regime to be the other side of the American coin.”
Al-Zeidi might have also been motivated by what a colleague described as a boastful, showoff personality.
“He tried to raise topics to show that nobody is as smart as he is,” said Zanko Ahmed, a Kurdish journalist who attended a journalism training course with al-Zeidi in Lebanon.
