Muntadhar al-Zaidi is an Iraqi broadcast journalist. He threw his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference while shouting, ‘This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog’ He has been sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a foreign head of state during an official visit.
About Muntadhar al-Zaidi in brief
Muntadhar al-Zaidi is an Iraqi broadcast journalist. He was kidnapped in November 2007. He threw his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference while shouting, ‘This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog’ He has been sentenced to three years in prison for assaulting a foreign head of state during an official visit. His sentence was reduced from three years to one year in September 2009 for good behavior after spending nine months in jail. After his release, he planned to build orphanages, a children’s hospital, and medical and orthopaedic centres offering free treatment and manned by Iraqi doctors and medical staff. He is of the Shi’a-Muslim faith and also is of Sayyid descent. He lives in a two-room apartment within central Baghdad. He once turned down an offer to work for what he termed \”a pro-occupation channel\”. Friends said he had been ’emotionally influenced’ by the destruction he’d seen in his coverage of the US bombing of Sadr City. He has also been arrested twice by United States armed forces.
His shoe-throwing inspired many similar incidents of political protest around the world. His shoes were later destroyed by US and Iraqi security forces, but the shoes are now on display in an Iraqi museum. He also works with a Lebanese TV channel as of February 2011. He began working as a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia TV in 2005. On Friday morning, 16 November 2007, he was kidnapped on his way to work in Baghdad. Unknown armed men forced him into a car, where he was beaten until he was blindfolded and bound to his hands with shoelaces. On 18 November, Reporters Without Borders reported him missing by Iraq’s Journalistic Freedoms Observatory. During his disappearance, al- Zaidi was reported missing by the Journalistic freedoms Observatory by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government. His kidnappers released him three days later, still blindfolding, with little food and drink and still on a street. They made no ransom demand for his release. They later made a statement about his detention and al-zaidi’s detention.
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