// Press Conference in Geneva Swiss Press Club Monday 19th October 2009 Official launching of the MAZ Foundation
«By this action I wanted to restore honour and dignity to the Iraqi people. I am going to start a big campaign to assemble Iraqi families and encourage them to bring a collective action against Bush so that he, and all those who collaborated with him be brought to justice in an international court of law and prosecuted for war crimes during the occupation in Iraq. »
Declaration on French Swiss Television (TSR) 21st September 2009
« I am not a hero but I am posessed by a vision and an observation. I was humiliated to see my country violated, my Bagdad in flames and my people massacred. Thousands of images and scenes of bodies torn open remain engraved on my mind and force me to take the way of truth and the path of courage and to reject all that is false, lies and deceipt. »
« By throwing my shoes in the face of that war criminal Bush, it was my intention to express my aversion to his lies and to the occupation of my country and the massacre of my people ; my disgust for the plundering of their resources, the destruction of their infrastructures and the dissemination of their sons into exile. »
« After six years of humiliation, of massacres, of raping, of destruction of holy places, this murderer boasts the triumph of democracy and comes to say farewell to its victims and expecting to receive garlands of flowers. This was simply my rose for the occupier and whoever wishes to conspire with him by deforming history and by spreading lies, both before and after the occupation. I want to defend the honour of my profession and eternal Iraqi nationalism ; defend the day my country was violated, the nation abandoned to plunderers and the pride and honour of a people trampled under foot »
« I did not desire to enter thus into history by my action, nor earn status or fame for myself, nor to revenge a brother, son or uncle. All I wished to do was to defend my country, a legitimate action justified by both international and divine law. I wished to defend an ancient civilisation violated. »
Extracts from the press conference given by MAZ the day he was liberated, 15th September 2009 in Bagdad.