BAGHDAD — Wearing leather shoes, a pressed beige suit and a scarf emblazoned with the Iraq flag, the Iraqi journalist who became a folk hero in the Arab world by slinging shoes at President George W. Bush defended his conduct on Thursday in court.
“I did not mean to kill the leader of the occupation forces,” Muntadar al-Zaidi said, speaking clearly and forcefully from a wooden cage before a packed courtroom. “I was expressing what’s inside of me and what’s inside the Iraqi people from north to south and from west to east.”
Throwing his shoes at Bush was not, he argued, a crime.
Zaidi, 30, who is charged with assaulting a foreign head of state, suggested that Bush’s Dec. 14 trip to Baghdad was not an official visit by a foreign dignitary because he arrived in the country without prior notice and didn’t leave the Green Zone, which was under U.S. control.
“I am charged now with attacking the prime minister’s guest,” he said stoically, making his first public remarks since the incident. “We Arabs are famous for being generous with guests. But Bush and his soldiers have been here for six years. Guests should knock on the door. Those who come sneaking in are not guests.”
After about an hour, the proceeding was halted until March 12 while the judge seeks an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush’s visit was, in fact, an “official” one.
Zaidi, a broadcast journalist employed by the Cairo-based al-Baghdadia satellite station, said he was tortured by Iraqi guards who took him into custody after the incident. He bore no visible scars in court Thursday, but he was missing a tooth, which relatives said was knocked out during one of the beatings he endured in custody.
During the news conference, Zaidi said, he became enraged as Bush provided an upbeat assessment of the security situation in Iraq.
“I did not know what achievements he was talking about,” Zaidi said. “I was seeing a million martyrs, seas of Iraqi blood, the desecration of mosques, the raping of Iraqi women and the humiliation Iraqis endure every day, every hour. Because I am a journalist, I know all about that.”
Bush smirked “icily,” Zaidi said, flashing a “smile with no spirit.”
Zaidi said he was overtaken by rage. “I was feeling the blood of innocent people flow under my feet as he was smiling. I felt that he is the killer of my people and I am one of those people. I became emotional because he’s responsible for what is going on in Iraq, so I hit him with my shoe.”
Actually, neither of the two shoes he threw hit the president.
