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….After he saw Lynch slapped, the lawyer slipped into her room at the Saddam Hospital in Nasiriyah and told her, “Don’t worry.” …“I love America. I like America. Why, I don’t know,” Mohammed said…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…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….”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… Mohammed and his family are now officially “temporary refugees.” … “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….”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.” [Kansas City Star, 4/3/03]
