Baghdad ? The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush is begging for a pardon for what he described as “an ugly act,” the prime minister’s spokesman said Thursday.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for an Iraqi-owned television station based in Cairo, Egypt, could face two years imprisonment for insulting a foreign leader. He remained in custody Thursday night.

“It is too late to reverse the big and ugly act that I perpetrated,” al-Zeidi wrote in a letter delivered to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to the prime minister’s spokesman.

The spokesman, Yassin Majid, told The Associated Press that al-Zeidi went on in the letter to recall an interview he conducted with the prime minister in 2005 when al-Maliki invited him into his home, saying: “Come in, it is your home too.”

“So I ask for your pardon, excellency,” Majid quoted the letter as saying.

However, the journalist’s brother, Dhargham al-Zeidi, told the AP he was skeptical that his brother would write such a letter.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Thursday that she’d seen reports that al-Zeidi had apologized but that she did not know whether Bush was aware of them.