Posted on 04/03/2003 7:09:25 PM PST by 68skylark
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The lawyer, whose first name is Mohammed and who asked that his last name not be published, smiled between every sentence as he recounted in broken but expressive English how he helped the Americans.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."
Yes, he will...now.
Yeah, I share your concerns about his future health and the health of his family.
What he's done is so conspicuous that I'm thinking he's always going to be at risk of payback from remnants of the Fedayeen, or any evil Iraqi a-hole with a grudge in the future.
I think this hero and his family might be safer in a country of his choosing, maybe the US or UK or Australia, with a generous bank account from the US.
As someone else said here, this guy has done far more to earn citizenship in the US than most citizens.
This guy seems unnaturally brave -- I hope he's not SO brave that he'll take unnecessary risks. But it should be up to him.
Can't. He loves America.
What a wonderful wonderful story!! Thank you so much for posting!!
Personally I'd like to see this guy get a seven-figure bank account from the US, plus some first-class tickets and permenant residence permits for his family to any coalition country he chooses.
I suspect that's what he'll be offered when this story gets around.
Someone said that Drudge has a link to this story -- that's all it takes to get this guy and his family finacially set for life. He's earned it.
Four guards....geeesh, even they realized her spunk.
I'm glad this man had the guts to finally seek out our military. Sadly, it should have been done days before.
Fedayeen commander: "Somethin' on your mind?"
Special Ops: "I just want you to know you got my POW."
Fedayeen commander: "Is that a fact?"
Special Ops: "Yeah, that's a fact."
Fedayeen commander: "Well for a man who don't wear the mustache you run your mouth kind of reckless, don't you?"
Special Ops": "No need to wear a mustache to get the bulge on a tub like you."
Fedayeen commander: "Is that a fact?"
Special Ops: "Mm-hmm. That's a fact."
Fedayeen commander: (Shaking). "Well, I'm real scared."
Special Ops: "Darn right you're scared, I can see it in your eyes."
Fedayeen commander: (Reaches for rusty pistol).
Special Ops: (Moving in). "Go ahead, skin it -- skin that smoke wagon and see what happens."
Fedayeen commander: "Listen, infidel, I-I'm getting awful tired of your..."
Special Ops: (Slaps Fedayeen in the face). "I'm getting tired of your gas. Now jerk that pistol and get to work." (Slap). "I said throw down, boy." (Slap).
Fedayeen commander: (Bleeding from the mouth).
Special Ops: "You going to do something or just stand there and bleed?"
Why wouldn't he have been able to do this onsite rather than return and come back?
Because he's not Dustin Hoffman in Rainman.
My high school Spanish teacher Senora Portilla had just come from Cuba (1960) when she told me, "Fidel es muy malo, es veddy bad man."
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