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Summary
An Iraqi reporter who shot to worldwide fame when he hurled his shoes at then U.S. President George W. Bush was released from prison on Tuesday. Muntazer al-Zaidi, whose act during a news conference last December chimed with the feelings of many Iraqis towards the former U.S. leader, was met outside the jail by parliamentarians who support his case, brother Uday al-Zaidi said. Zaidi was sentenced to three years in jail for assaulting a visiting head of state, but his sentence was later reduced to one year. Today I am free again but my home is still a prison, he told reporters shortly after his release, a swipe at the continued U.S. military presence in Iraq six and half years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein. What provoked me to a confrontation was the injustice that has befallen my people, and the way in which the occupation wanted to humiliate my country by placing it and its people -- the elderly, women, children and men -- under its boot, he told a news conference after his release. Al-Zaidi added that due to the injustice of the occupation in Iraq, he decided to do his act against Bush. An Iraqi court ordered Zaidi's release on Monday because under Iraqi law all prisoners sentenced to one year without previous convictions and who show good behaviour automatically get out after serving three quarters of it.
