"Iraq military questions Bush shoe protester"

Guardian UK:

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush has been beaten in custody, his brother said today.

Muntadhar al-Zaidi suffered a broken hand, broken ribs and internal bleeding, as well as an eye injury, his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC.

Zaidi emerged as an unlikely hero in the Arab world, with tens of thousands demonstrating for his release, after he threw both his shoes at the US president at a press conference in Baghdad, calling him a dog. As he was handed over to the Iraqi military hundreds protested for a second day at his detention.

Zaidi, who forced the US president to duck at the event as it was televised live, was turned over by the prime minister's security guards to face further investigation by the military command in charge of enforcing security in Baghdad.

Iraqi security took Zaidi into custody and interrogated him about whether anybody had paid him to throw his shoes at Bush on Sunday, according to unnamed officials. He could face charges of insulting a foreign leader and the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who was standing next to Bush. The offence carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

As Zaidi faced further questioning, Iraqis continued to voice their support for the 28-year-old journalist, whose gesture has come to distil Iraqi anger at the US in general and Bush in particular. In Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, an estimated 1,000 protesters carried banners and chanted slogans demanding al-Zaidi's release.

A couple of hundred more also protested in the mainly Shia city of Nassiriya, south-east of Baghdad, and Sunni Falluja, west of the capital.

"Muntadhar al-Zaidi has expressed the feelings and ambitions of the Iraqi people toward the symbol of tyranny," Nassar Afrawi, a protester in Nassiriya, told the Associated Press.

In Baghdad, the head of the Iraqi union of journalists described Zaidi's action as "strange and unprofessional" but urged clemency.

"Even if he has committed a mistake, the government and the judiciary are broad minded and we hope they consider his release because he has a family and he is still young," Mouyyad al-Lami told Associated Press's television news. "We hope this case ends before going to court."

Ten of thousands of people throughout Iraq have demonstrated in support of Zaidi. Throwing shoes is a deep insult in the Arab world, and Iraqis showed their contempt for Saddam Hussein when they removed their shoes to beat his statue with when Baghdad fell to US forces in 2003.

Dargham al-Zaidi told the BBC that he believed his brother had now been taken to a US military hospital in the Iraqi capital. Despite offers from many lawyers his brother had not been given access to any since being arrested by forces under the command of Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser.

Bush's valedictory tour of the two main fronts in the "war on terror", Iraq and Afghanistan, was aimed at enhancing his legacy as he approaches his last month in office. But optimistic talk of progress on the battlefield was overshadowed by Zaidi's surprise action.

Both shoes missed their target - one went high, and the president ducked the other - and Bush did his best to laugh the whole incident off. "I saw his sole," he joked. But Bush is unlikely to escape the image of a US president cowering behind a lectern watched by an unflinching Maliki. The humiliating scene is already a YouTube hit.

Howie P.S.: People magazine has this profile on al-Zaidi: "Who Is the Shoe-Throwing Iraqi Journalist?"