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Doctors who treated PoW dismiss rape
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) davidchibo@hotmail.com - Saturday, November 8 2003, 0:53:17 (EST)
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Doctors who treated former PoW dismiss rape claim
November 8, 2003

Iraqi doctors who treated former American prisoner of war Jessica Lynch today dismissed claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors.

Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story indicate that she was raped and sodomized by her Iraqi captors, according to US media who said they had advance copies.

The book - due to be released Tuesday - covers Lynch's experience between March 23 when her convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah and April 1 when she was evacuated from a hospital by US commandos. It was unclear if the book cites American or Iraqi records.

A family spokesman, Stephen Goodwin, confirmed the book alleges Lynch was raped.

Lynch suffered broken bones to her right arm, right leg and thighs and ankle and received a head injury when her Humvee utility vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed into another vehicle. Eleven soldiers were killed in the attack.

Dr Mahdi Khafazji, an orthopedic surgeon at Nasiriyah's main hospital, performed surgery on Lynch to repair a fractured femur and said he found no signs that she was raped or sodomized.

Khafazji, speaking at his private clinic in Nasiriyah, said he examined her extensively and would have detected signs of sexual assault. He said the examination turned up no trace of semen.

"She was injured at about seven in the morning," he said. "What kind of animal would do it to a person suffering from multiple injuries?"

Dr. Jamal al-Saeidi, a brigadier general and head of the orthopedic department at the now disbanded Military Hospital, Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up when she was taken to the hospital.

He said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.

Lynch had lost more than half of her blood because of a wound on the left side of her head, as well as broken limbs that caused internal bleeding, al-Saeidi said.

Soon after surgery, military intelligence officers came to the hospital to take Lynch away. Al-Saeidi told them if she did not get medical attention she would die. They took her to the Saddam Hospital, where she stayed nine days until Iraqi soldiers left the hospital.

Several hours later American commandos raided the hospital and evacuated her.

"Why are they saying such things?" a bitter Dr. Khodheir al-Hazbar, the hospital's deputy director, said. "We were good to her."

In an interview with the US television network ABC, Lynch said she has no recollection of a rape.

"Even just the thinking about that, that's too painful," she said.

Lynch told ABC she doesn't remember being slapped or mistreated at the hospital, and she recalled one nurse sang to her.

She also accused the military of using her capture and dramatic nighttime rescue to sway public support for the war in Iraq.

But in the ABC interview to be aired on Tuesday, Lynch told correspondent Diane Sawyer there was no reason for her rescue to be filmed.

"They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff," Lynch said. "It's wrong."

Lynch told Sawyer she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that her gun jammed during the chaos. "I'm not about to take credit for something I didn't do," she said.

"I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. ... I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."

-AP



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