200 lawyers offer to defend Bush shoe attacker

* Detained journalist’s employer calls for his ‘immediate release’

AMMAN: Saddam Hussein’s former lawyer said on Monday he was forming a team to defend the Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at US President George W Bush during his farewell visit to Baghdad.

“So far around 200 Iraqi and other lawyers, including Americans, have expressed willingness to defend the journalist for free,” the Amman-based Khalil al-Dulaimi told AFP. “I took the decision on Sunday night to defend the man after the incident. I am currently contacting Arab bar associations to form a defence committee.” Television journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi jumped up as Bush was holding a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Sunday, shouted “It is the farewell kiss, you dog” and threw two shoes at the US leader.

Both missed after Bush ducked, but Zaidi was wrestled to the ground by security guards and arrested. “It was the least thing for an Iraqi to do to Bush, the tyrant criminal who has killed two million people in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Dulaimi, calling for Zaidi’s immediate release. Dulaimi headed Saddam’s defence team until the execution of the former Iraqi president in December 2006.

“Our defence of Zaidi will be based on the fact that the United States is occupying Iraq, and resistance is legitimate by all means, including shoes,” he said. A Jordan-based Iraqi rights group also called for Zaidi’s release. Zaidi’s colleagues, who works for independent Iraqi television station Al-Baghdadia, said he “detested America” and had been plotting such an attack for months against the man who ordered the invasion of his country. Hundreds of Iraqis joined anti-US demonstrations to protest at Bush’s farewell visit on Sunday to Iraq.

Release demanded: “Al-Baghdadia television demands that the Iraqi authorities immediately release their stringer Muntazer al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people,” it said in a statement. “Any measures against Muntazer will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime.” In Cairo, Muzhir al-Khafaji, programming director for the television channel, described Zaidi as a “proud Arab and an open-minded man,” saying he had worked at Al-Baghdadia for three years.

“We fear for his safety,” he told AFP, adding that Zaidi had been arrested twice before by the Americans and that there were fears that more of the station’s 200 correspondents in Iraqi would be arrested. afp