Iraqi shoe-thrower says he was tortured

BAGHDAD, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former President George W. Bush and was freed Tuesday from a Baghdad prison, alleged he was tortured while jailed.

Muntazer al-Zaidi said he was beaten with pipes and steel cables, and received electric shocks while in custody, The New York Times reported.

"Here I am free, and my country is still captured," al-Zaidi said during a news conference at the television station where he worked at the time of the shoe-throwing incident in December.

Family members said al-Zaidi would go to Greece to receive medical attention.

"He is going to flee," said his brother, Uday al-Zaidi.

Al-Zaidi said he fears for his life, in part, because he plans to reveal the names of the people he said participated in his torture, including several high-ranking security officials, his brother said.

"I will name later those involved in torturing me, among them high-ranking officials in the government and the army," the journalist said during his remarks.

Al-Zaidi threw his shoes at Bush and called the president a "dog" during a news conference in Baghdad last December. Bush ducked and wasn't hit.

"I saw the chance and I seized it," al-Zaidi said Tuesday. "If those who blamed me knew how many destroyed houses I walked over with those shoes that I threw, and how many times those shoes mixed with the blood of the innocent, and how many times those shoes went into homes where the honor of those who lived there was disgraced, then it was probably the proper response."

Ali al-Mosawi, an adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said al-Zaidi's remarks should be taken with a grain of salt since he was just released from prison.