Word: baghdad
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...land replete with martyrs and miscreants, Iraqis are divided over which label applies to Muntazer al-Zaidi. The once obscure television journalist who shot to fame for hurling his footwear at then President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference late last year was sentenced on Thursday to three years in prison after being found guilty of "assaulting a foreign leader on an official visit." But despite the verdict of Baghdad's Central Criminal Court, many ordinary Iraqis still hail the 30-year-old Shi'ite shoe thrower as a national hero...
...will sacrifice for the sake of all of the martyrs" as his verdict was read out. And his sentiments are shared by many in the capital. "They should erect a statue in his honor, not put him in jail," said Abu Sayyed, a 55-year-old taxi driver in Baghdad's Karrada district. (See pictures of the shoe attack and its aftermath...
...days and weeks since the Baghdadia network correspondent fastballed his size 10s at Bush during Bush's joint press conference with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad on Dec. 14, his actions have been the talk of the town. Banners were hung in his honor in many parts of the capital. And in Saddam Hussein's former stronghold of Tikrit, a statue of a large shoe was erected - but then quickly removed, on orders from the Iraqi parliament. Support for al-Zaidi elsewhere in the Arab world was even more effusive, his seemingly spontaneous act resonating across a region...
...their lethal effectiveness and high casualty rates, may signal the resumption of a reinvigorated insurgency that has had time to regroup. A source close to the insurgency told TIME that sleeper cells in and around the Sunni stronghold of Abu Ghraib - site of the infamous prison now renamed the Baghdad Central Prison - have been planning renewed attacks for months. Tuesday's strike in the marketplace was carried out by the sheik of a local extremist Takfiri mosque, a man in his 20s named Abu Taymiyeh, the source claimed. The allegation could not be independently verified...
Major General David Perkins, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, told a press conference in Baghdad on Sunday that al-Qaeda was increasingly desperate to maintain relevance in Iraq. The source close to the insurgency told TIME that al-Qaeda was regrouping and recalibrating its focus. "The politics of the attacks have changed," the source said. "They don't want to attack the Americans because they know they are leaving. They are targeting the Awakening councils and the tribes because they are working with the government," he said, referring to the mainly Sunni councils that turned against the insurgency...