Marionetregeringen vil anklage ham for “mordforsøg mod statsoverhoved”, og i følge hans familie har han allerede fået sine første bank i fængslet.
Men for mange irakere er al-Zaidi manden, der gjorde, hvad der skulle til og viste Bush, hvor velkommen han er i irak.
Sami Ramadani skriver i The Guardian:
Strip the words away, and his and the Iraqi people’s cry of deep pain, anger and defiance would amount to no more than a shoe-throwing insult. But the words were heard. “This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” he shouted as he threw the first shoe. The crucial line followed the second shoe: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” Once those words were heard, the impact of a pair of shoes became electrifying. A young journalist has put aside the demands of his profession, preferring to act as the loudest cry of his long-suffering people. If one considers the torture and killings in Iraqi and US jails that Muntadhar often mentioned in his reports for al-Baghdadia satellite TV station, he was certainly aware he risked being badly hurt.
As the Iraqi and Arab satellite stations switched from the live press conference to reporting reaction to the event, the stunned presenters and reporters were swept away by popular expressions of joy in the streets, from Baghdad to Gaza to Casablanca. TV stations and media websites were inundated with messages of adulation. The instant reply to any criticism of “insulting a guest” was: “Bush is a mass murderer and a war criminal who sneaked into Baghdad. He killed a million Iraqis. He burned the country down.”
al-Zaidi har formået at skære igennem alle religiøse, politiske og etniske skillelinjer i det hærgede og splittede land: Ingen spørger, hvor han kommer fra eller om han er sunni eller shia, alle beundrer ham for at vise George Bush, hvad de mener om ham og hans “befrielse” af landet.
Link: The shoes we longed for