Baghdad: The trial of an Iraqi journalist who famously threw his shoes at former US president George W Bush in December opened in Baghdad on Thursday, and was later adjourned.
Montazer al-Zaidi, a journalist for the Cairo-based al-Baghdadiya television station, arrived in court clad in a suit and draped in an Iraqi flag.
People in court waved Iraqi flags as the 30-year-old arrived, and cheered. A crowd gathered outside the court also waved Iraqi flags, and chanted demands for his release.
After listening to witnesses including al-Zaidi himself, a judge at the Central Criminal Court adjourned the trial until March 12 so that the court could ask Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki whether former president Bush had been in Iraq on an official visit.
Al-Zaidi faces up to 15 years in prison on charges of assaulting a foreign head of state for throwing his shoes at the former US president at a December press conference in Baghdad.
Al-Zaidi's lawyers have said the journalist was exercising his constitutional right to free expression, and politicians Iraqi and Arab politicians have called for his release, calling him a hero.
If the judge reduces the charge to simple assault, the maximum sentence would be five years.
Al-Zaidi became a hero in Iraq and the Arab world when he threw his shoes at Bush and called out: "This is a farewell present, you dog!"
The shoes narrowly missed the former president, and Bush joked that the shoes were "size 10."
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