Muntazer al-Zaidi, 29, a correspondent for the Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya TV channel, threw his shoes at George Bush during a news conference in Baghdad in mid-December and shouted in Arabic: "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, dog." Bush managed to duck in time and avoided injury.
"At the beginning of this month, his family contacted me through the International Committee of the Red Cross and I sent a letter this week to the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, asking Switzerland to grant him political asylum," al-Zaidi's lawyer, Mauro Poggia, was quoted by the newspaper as saying.
According to Poggia, al-Zaidi "can no longer work as a journalist without suffering horrible pressure...His life could become hell in his own country."
The Iraqi journalist was immediately apprehended in the press room after the shoe-throwing incident and is presently being held in a jail in Baghdad. He has been charged with "aggressive actions toward a foreign official," a crime which carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years according to Iraqi law.
More than 100 lawyers from around the world have offered to represent al-Zaidi in court, including the lawyer who defended Iraq's late leader Saddam Hussein, executed by Iraqi authorities after the U.S.-led invasion to topple his regime.
A special committee, headed by the chair of the Iraq union of lawyers, Dhiyaa al-Saadi, has also been formed in Iraq to defend the journalist.
According to al-Saadi, the "defense is leaning toward proving that al-Zaidi was merely protesting against the occupiers and their policies, which in civil law is simply the freedom of expressing one's own opinion."
The journalist's actions turned him into a national hero in many Arab countries.
