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Shoe 'hero': Muntazer al-Zaidi. pic/ap

The Iraqi TV reporter who hurled his shoes at George W Bush was kidnapped once by militants and, separately, detained briefly by the US military. Over time, Muntazer al-Zaidi, a 28-year-old unmarried Shiite, came to hate both the US military occupation and Iran's interference in Iraq, his family said yesterday.

Family members expressed bewilderment over al-Zaidi's action and concern about his treatment in Iraqi custody. But they also expressed pride over his defiance of an American president who many Iraqis believe has destroyed their country.

 "I swear to Allah, he is a hero," said his sister, Umm Firas, as she watched a replay of her brother's attack on an Arabic satellite station. "May Allah protect him." The family insisted that al-Zaidi's action was spontaneous perhaps motivated by the political turmoil that their brother had reported on, plus his personal brushes with violence and the threat of death that millions of Iraqis face every day.

Al-Zaidi joined Al-Baghdadia TV in September 2005 after graduating from Baghdad University with a degree in communications. Two years later, he was seized by gunmen while on an assignment in a Sunni district of north Baghdad. It left him scarred.

He was freed unharmed three days later after Iraqi television stations broadcast appeals for his release. At the time, al-Zaidi told reporters he did not know who kidnapped him or why, but his family blamed al-Qaida and said no ransom was paid.

In January he was taken again, this time arrested by US soldiers who searched his apartment building, his brother, Dhirgham, said. He was released the next day with an apology.

Those experiences helped mold a deep resentment of both the US military's presence here and Iran's pervasive influence over Iraq's cleric-dominated Shiite community, according to his family.

"He hates the American physical occupation as much as he hates the Iranian moral occupation," Dhirgham said, alluding to the influence of pro-Iranian Shiite clerics in political and social life. "As for Iran, he considers the regime to be the other side of the American coin."