Iraqi reporter regrets "ugly act"
The jailed Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush has asked for a pardon for what he described as "an ugly act," a spokesman for Iraq's prime minister said Thursday. Muntadhar al-Zeidi could face two years imprisonment for insulting a foreign leader. He remained in custody Thursday night.
"It is too late to now to regret the big and ugly act that I perpetrated," al-Zeidi wrote in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the prime minister's spokesman. The spokesman, Yassin Majid, told The Associated Press that al-Zeidi went on in the letter to recall an interview he conducted with the Iraqi leader in 2005 when al-Maliki invited him into his home, saying: "Come in, it is your home too."
"So I ask for your pardon," al-Zeidi wrote, Majid said.