Jasim Ramadon, former teen Iraqi hero, charged in horrific rape
Jasim Mohammed Hassin Ramadon is one of five Iraqi men charged in a rape so horrific that a Colorado Springs Police spokeswoman can barely describe the details without getting emotional. And yet last fall, Ramadon was featured in a TV report on view below in which he was hailed as a hero for helping U.S. troops while a teen by, among other things, aiding in the arrest of his own father.
Big photos below.
In an October feature on KOAA-TV, Ramadon is described as a "secret weapon" for soldiers serving in Iraq circa 2003, when he was only thirteen.
"I saw people get their head cut off, people chopped up to pieces, people die in front of me, explode," he says in the report. "In Iraq, my dad was in the military with Saddam Hussein's military. He was a captain.... He gave me an A-K and said, 'Time for your childhood is gone. Now you've got to fire at the soldiers.'"
Rather than doing so, Ramadon told KOAA that he instead approached U.S. Army Sergeant Robert Evans and asked to be arrested -- after which he started to provide information about insurgent cells and the like. The first target for the boy Evans and fellow soldiers dubbed "Steve-O" was to bust his own dad.
A photo of Jasim Ramodon as a teenager helping U.S. troops in Iraq.
"We had Steve-O in the Humvee -- ski mask," Evans says in the report. "Brought his father out; he identified him through the window of the Humvee."
In the end, young Ramadon is said to have participated in twenty missions and aided in the capture of forty Saddam loyalists -- tales told by Army First Sergeant Daniel Hendrex in a 2009 book called A Soldier's Promise.
Ramadon on the cover of "A Soldier's Promise."
As KOAA notes, soldiers helped Ramadon relocate to the United States. He stayed with Hendrex for a time before entering the foster system -- and he admitted that he had trouble in local schools, in part because other kids called him a "terrorist." He also had learning issues that likely were either caused or worsened by post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries for which he was receiving treatment last year from the Warrior Relaxation Response Center.
The report includes Ramadon talking about being a good father -- he's seen with a toddler. (Not mentioned are past run-ins with the law; the Colorado Springs Gazette notes that he currently has two protection orders pending against him.) He also lingers over memories of his mother, who was killed in Iraq. In his words, "I think she's proud of me; I know she watches over me. I don't regret that decision [to help the U.S. soldiers], because this is the right thing to do, and she always taught me to do the right thing."
Which brings us to the awful events of July 22.
Page down to continue reading about the arrest of Jasim Ramadon and four others.
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