The steps of the building of the Journalists' Syndicate were the scene of a protest vigil with shoes in solidarity with the Iraqi journalist Montazer Al Zaidi after he was arrested last Sunday on charges of hitting the American President George Bush with his shoes at a press conference held in Baghdad. Taking part in the vigil, called for by the freedoms committee of the Journalists' Syndicate, were some a few members of the syndicate council as well as members of the Iraqi community in Cairo and representatives of the Kefaya, March 9 and 6th of April youth movements in addition to Dr. Malika Zarar, professor of Islamic jurisprudence at Al Azhar university. The participants in the vigil raised several placards and chanted slogans such as: “The shoe is just the start”, “We want immediate release”, “Free Iraqi people have risen and hit the tartars with shoes”. While some people said that al-Zaidi bought his shoes from Cairo during his recent visit to Egypt, journalist and writer Mustafa Al Bakry hailed late President Saddam Hussein saying that we should not forget to take revenge on him. This led some participants in the vigil to criticize him, as they said they had come to show solidarity with al-Zaidi and not with Saddam. Bakry demanded that the American president be put on trial for his crimes in the Iraqi and Afghan wars, saying it is necessary to stand beside al-Zaidi as a “national hero”. The Head of the freedoms committee of the Journalists' Syndicate, Mohammed Abdel Kudos, called on Egyptian and Arab journalists to consider December 1 as a Memorial Day for them. Gamal Fahmy, a member of the syndicate's board of directors sent, in the name of the association, his greetings to al-Zaidi for his courage. In a related context, the Iraqi investigating judge Dhia' Al Kenany said that the shoe thrown by al-Zaidi at the American president was torn apart while it was being examined in search for explosive materials that may have been hidden in it. He explained that the absence of any main evidence in this case would not prevent the continuation of the investigation. This comes at a time when the media adviser of the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday that the PM received a written message from al-Zaidi expressing his “regret and apology”.
