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Bush's "icy smile" enraged Iraq shoe-thrower
Thu Feb 19, 2009 9:58am EST
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By Khalid al-Ansary
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi reporter who hurled his shoes at George W. Bush said in the past he had videotaped himself practicing the Arab insult to use against the president whose "icy smile" had filled him with uncontrollable rage.
Muntazer al-Zaidi said on Thursday at the start of his trial in Baghdad on charges of assaulting a foreign leader that he took a recording of his shoe-throwing training two years ago and had hoped to accost Bush in Jordan but this did not take place.
Zaidi, who was hailed across the Middle East by critics of the Iraq invasion and who also called Bush a "dog," told the court he had acknowledged making a training film under interrogation after his arrest at a Baghdad news conference.
"I said this before the guards of the prime minister after I was beaten and after my body was devoured by electricity," said Zaidi, who added that his original plan had been to throw the shoes at Bush during a news conference in Amman.
But Zaidi, whose unusual protest overshadowed Bush's final visit to Iraq in December, insisted he had not planned to attack Bush this time.
Instead, he said Bush's smile as he talked about achievements in Iraq had made him think of "the killing of more than a million Iraqis, the disrespect for the sanctity of the mosques and houses, the rapes of women," and enraged him.
"He was talking and at the same time smiling icily at the (Iraqi) prime minister. He said to the prime minister that he was going to have dinner with him," Zaidi told a three-judge panel, a small army of 25 defense lawyers lined up next to him.
"Suddenly I saw no one in the room but Bush. I felt the blood of innocents was running under his feet while he was smiling coldly as if he had come to write off Iraq with a farewell meal."
Zaidi added: "After more than a million Iraqis killed, after all the economic and social destruction ... I felt that this person is the killer of the people, the prime murderer. I was enraged and threw my shoes at him."
At the time, Zaidi shouted at Bush that the shoe-throwing was a "goodbye kiss from the Iraqi people, dog."
The trial had barely begun at Iraq's Central Criminal Court in the heavily fortified Green Zone before the judges postponed proceedings until March 12 so it could be determined if Bush was truly on an "official" visit to Iraq as a head of state.
ZAIDI DRAPED WITH FLAG
When Zaidi appeared in court, family members waiting for him ululated wildly and draped an Iraqi flag across his shoulders.
Zaidi, 30, who faces up to 15 years in prison, has been detained for more than two months.
The reporter for an Iraqi television station based in Cairo became a hero in much of the Middle East and his protest was played by television stations around the world. Continued...
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