Iraqi informer angered by treatment of POW (article)

[Alex Moon]

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascit ... tstory.jsp

Iraqi informer angered by treatment of POW

By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MARINE COMBAT HEADQUARTERS, Iraq - The Iraqi man who tipped U.S. Marines to the location of American POW Jessica Lynch said Thursday he did so after he saw her Iraqi captor slap her twice as she lay wounded in a hospital.

"A person, no matter his nationality, is a human being," the tipster, a 32-year-old lawyer whose wife was a nurse at the hospital, said in an interview at Marines' headquarters, where he, his wife and daughter are being treated as heroes and guests of honor.

"He is an extremely courageous man who should serve as an inspiration to all of us to do the right thing," said Lt. Col. Rick Long, spokesman for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, "Don't worry." Then he walked six miles to the nearest U.S. Marines and told them where she was.

He later returned to the hospital, at the request of U.S. commanders, to map the facility and count how many Saddam Hussein loyalists were there.

A U.S. commando force whose name remains secret rescued Lynch early Wednesday local time. She was taken Thursday to Germany for treatment of injuries she suffered when she was captured.

The lawyer, whose first name is Mohammed and who asked that his last name not be published, smiled between every sentence as he recounted in broken but expressive English how he helped the Americans. He learned English at Basra University.

Wearing Marine hand-me-downs after fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, Mohammed, his wife Iman, 32, a nurse at Saddam Hospital, and 6-year-old daughter Abir, seemed surprisingly cheerful for a family on the run.

Grateful Leathernecks showered them with Marine unit patches, a commemorative coin and an American flag on their way to a refugee center near the port of Umm Qsar, where they hope to ride out the war.

"I love America. I like America. Why, I don't know," Mohammed said as he recounted the critical role he played in Lynch's rescue.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has long repressed Iraq's people with such a brutal grip that even with American troops at the gates to Baghdad many refuse to rise up against him out of fear that he will outlast the Americans.

But Mohammed's tale is one of a man who didn't like what he saw when he walked into the Saddam Hospital last Friday to visit his wife and was told by a doctor friend that an American woman POW was in the emergency ward.

The friend walked him to the ground-floor ward, taken over by the feared Saddam Fedayeen at the start of the war, and past a window where he saw Lynch, an Army private first class captured after her convoy became lost near Nasiriyah in the opening days of the war.

Her head was bandaged, her right arm was in a sling over a white blanket and she had what Mohammed thought was a gunshot wound to a leg. But her real problem then was the black-uniformed Fedayeen commander who everyone addressed as "colonel."

The man slapped her, Mohammed said. "One, two," he added, making single slapping and back slap motions with his right hand. She was very brave, he recalled.

"My heart cut," Mohammed added, meaning stopped, putting his hand over his chest and grimacing. "There, I have decided to go to Americans to give them important information about the woman prisoner."

He walked into her room with his doctor friend. "I said 'Good morning.' She thought I was a doctor. I say, 'Don't worry.' She smiled," he recalled.

Doctors treating Lynch wanted to amputate her leg, Mohammed said, but his doctor friend persuaded them not to. His friend, he said, "hates Saddam Hussein and hates security of Saddam Hussein."

Mohammed said he told his wife to take their daughter to his father's house for safety, and then set off on foot to find the American troops he had heard were occupying the edges of Nasiriyah.

"This was very dangerous for me because American soldiers shoot," he said, throwing up his hands in the air to show how he carefully approached what turned out to be the U.S. Marines.

He told them about the woman prisoner, and about a U.S. military uniform he had also seen, presumably of a U.S. soldier killed in the fighting in and around Nasiriyah, some of the heaviest of the war.

They asked him to return to the six-story, 234-bed hospital to gather information on its layout, its hallways, stairways and doors, its basement and whether a helicopter could land on its roof.

He walked back, with no taxis in sight, even as U.S. jets bombed parts of the city of more than 500,000 people. "Boom, boom. I walked under bombs. Fire, Fire," Mohammed recalled.

He did the same thing the next day to report back to the Marines.

There were 41 Fedayeen based at the hospital, with four guarding Lynch's room in civilian clothes but armed with AK-47 assault rifles and carrying radios.

"I drew them a map. I drew them five maps," he said, plainly relishing his cloak-and-dagger missions into the heart of Saddam's terror network.

Fedayeen raided his house the next day, he said, taking away all his possessions and even his car, a Russian-made Muscovitch Brazilia 680. He said a neighbor was shot and her body dragged through the streets just for waving at a U.S. helicopter.

"Very bad people," he said. "There is no kindness in my heart for them."

He got his family out of Nasiriyah on Tuesday night, hours before a task force of U.S. commandos rescued Lynch in a raid so noteworthy that the U.S. Central Command in Qatar called a 4:30 a.m. news conference to announce it.

Four American journalists who have had regular access to the Marines' combat operations center in southern Iraq were asked to stay away from the COC as the rescue operation was getting underway.

Mohammed and his family are now officially "temporary refugees."

After showers, Mohammed put on an oversized green Marine pullover, his wife put on one of the gray T-shirts that MTV donated to the Leathernecks and his daughter was covered to her knees in a green T-shirt from a Marine chemical warfare unit.

But Mohammed did not appear despondent, as his wife smiled and stayed shyly in the background and daughter Abir played with a neon-green illumination stick given to her by a Marine.

"I am very happy," he said, adding that his wife wants to work in a hospital helping Americans and that he is eager to help the Marines any way he can until he can return home to Nasiriyah and resume his normal life.

"In future, when Saddam Hussein down, I will go back to Nasiriyah because my house and office are there," he said. As for the Fedayeen, he said, "when Saddam Hussein down, I sure they go away."

"Believe me, not only I, all the people of Iraq, not the people in the government, like Americans," Mohammed said. "They want to help the Americans, but they are all afraid."

[Enforcer Talen]

good man.

[Xenophobe3691]

Well, at least there's some humanity left in that place. He is a hero.

[Wicked Pilot]

That man should never have to pay for alcohol for the rest of his life. Assuming he drinks it of course.

[Nathan F]

I would bet that he is now set for life, once a democratic gov't is set up in Iraq.

[Sokar]

Im sure the post-Saddam Nasiriyah area will need a good man as our liason during the occupation

[RedImperator]

He walked six miles out to the Marines and told them there was an American POW in the hospital guarded by militia. That was brave.

Then he walked back, made a fucking MAP of the place, then walked BACK to the Marines. That took two big ten pound brass ones.

[Durandal]

The guy's a fucking hero. I'd say he deserves recognition once the war is over.

And, yet again.

USE THE FUCKING BREAKING NEWS THREAD

[Companion Cube]

Hopefully, he'll survive the Battle of Baghdad, and when the war is over, he can get the public recognition he deserves...

[Darth Wong]

Hopefully, he'll survive the Battle of Baghdad, and when the war is over, he can get the public recognition he deserves...

I would want him to be publicly recognized if he moves to America. It might be bad for him to be publicly recognized if he continues to live in Iraq, because he might have to worry about fanatics targeting him and his family for years into the future.

[Companion Cube]

Hopefully, he'll survive the Battle of Baghdad, and when the war is over, he can get the public recognition he deserves...

I would want him to be publicly recognized if he moves to America. It might be bad for him to be publicly recognized if he continues to live in Iraq, because he might have to worry about fanatics targeting him and his family for years into the future.

Yeah, a move to the US might be a good idea for him.

[Sea Skimmer]

On a kind of related topic, supposedly some Iraqi POW's in American hands are complaining because where not supplying them with cigarettes...

[salm]

i wonder what he got for the barther he obviously had with the amis.