U.S. Marine Is Safe, but Still Subject Of Mystery
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  1. #1
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    U.S. Marine Is Safe, but Still Subject Of Mystery

    U.S. Marine Is Safe, but Still Subject Of Mystery
    Man Once Feared Dead Arrives at Beirut Embassy
    By Robin Shulman
    Washington Post Foreign Service
    Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A01


    BEIRUT, July 8 -- A Lebanese-born U.S. Marine who had been reported captured and beheaded in Iraq was brought alive to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Thursday night, but few details about his case were available, U.S. officials said.

    Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 24, a translator with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, arrived at the heavily guarded embassy about 6 p.m., said spokeswoman Elizabeth Wharton. "An embassy vehicle picked him up in Beirut and brought him to the embassy," she said.

    The confirmation that Hassoun was at the embassy ended days of uncertainty about his safety and whereabouts, while family members in Lebanon and Utah had refused to confirm or deny reports that he was present in this country.

    Hassoun had disappeared from his Marine base near Fallujah on June 19 and later was shown on al-Jazeera satellite television, blindfolded, with a sword hanging over his head. A group calling itself Islamic Response asserted responsibility for his kidnapping and threatened to kill him.

    A militant group claiming to be the Ansar al-Sunna Army said on a Web site Saturday that it had beheaded the Marine. But the group said Sunday that it had not issued the statement, and a posting on another Internet site said Hassoun was alive.

    On Monday, al-Jazeera reported that it had received a report from Islamic militants saying that Hassoun was in a safe place and had promised to quit the Marines.

    On Wednesday, reports surfaced that he was in Lebanon.

    At the Pentagon on Thursday, Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials had little information about Hassoun. "The investigation is ongoing, and we don't know how he got there or what went on between the time that he was reported missing from his unit until he got into Lebanon," Rodriguez said at a media briefing. "He came to the embassy compound, and under our control, of his own accord."

    Hassoun's mother and father, one of his brothers and his new Lebanese wife joined him at the embassy in the Awkar neighborhood of Beirut, according to family members.

    "I was so excited, but he's always calm and steady," said a brother, Sami Hassoun, 26. "We shook hands and hugged and kissed."

    "He's alive now, he's safe and sound -- that's all I want from God," he added.

    But in Tripoli, 50 miles north of Beirut, where Hassoun's family lives, a fight broke out and a relative of Hassoun shot and killed two people and injured a third person, Lebanese officials reported. Other Tripoli residents had accused Hassoun of being a traitor because he left Lebanon and fought with the Marines in Iraq, his brother said.

    The family member, Mohamad Said Hassoun, was arrested in the killings, according to internal security forces in Tripoli.

    "Everybody here is calling us traitors," Sami Hassoun said. "I think somebody pushed those people to this to try to hurt my family and my relatives. There's no background for these things."


  2. #2
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    US MArine in Lebanon - con'td


    Police were deployed to guard the Hassoun family home, an apartment on the second floor of a six-story building in a low-income area of Tripoli, a witness said. The neighborhood is known as one of the most conservative and religious in northern Lebanon.


    Hassoun was raised there and attended American schools in Lebanon until moving to the United States in 1999. He lived with his brothers in Utah for two years and joined the Marines in 2001.

    The family's appeals for Hassoun's release had included efforts to establish their credibility as devout Muslims. A spokesman for the family in the United States, Tarek Nosseir, issued statements wishing for Hassoun's safety in the name of God.

    Family friends in Lebanon had sought help from Lebanon's Jamaa Islamiya, an Islamic group associated with Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, according to the group's deputy leader, Ibrahim Masri.

    A week ago, Jamaa Islamiya leaders discussed Hassoun with a delegation of Iraqi Sunni Muslim leaders visiting Beirut, Masri said. The Lebanese group asked the Iraqis to pass on a plea for Hassoun's release to groups that might be holding him hostage, he said.

    Masri said his group opposed the kidnapping and killing of Americans in Iraq. "He's not a traitor. No one considers him a traitor," Masri said. "This kind of killing is a crime, not a path to justice."

    In the Salt Lake City suburb of West Jordan, Utah, family members had no comment.

    The Hassoun house is in a new subdivision at the foot of the snowcapped Wasatch Range. Neighbors and a Boy Scout troop had covered the front yard with American flags, and reporters camped out on nearby streets awaiting developments.

    The U.S. Navy initially termed Hassoun's disappearance "unauthorized leave," but his status was changed a week later, on June 27, when he was shown on television under threat.

    Nosseir expressed the family's gratitude when the Marines officially revoked the initial designation and began calling the corporal a captive.

    On Wednesday, two investigators from the FBI arrived at the West Jordan home to question Hassoun's relatives. That sparked renewed questions about his disappearance and motives.

    Hassoun was reported not to have returned to Utah since joining the Marines. He had been married to an American, but they divorced. His family said he married his new wife, a cousin, by proxy several months ago. His father signed the marriage contract for him, under Islamic law.

    Hassoun attended college part time and held a sales job in Utah. At one point, family friends said, his mother and father also lived in West Jordan, but the father returned to Lebanon.

    Pentagon officials said they did not know what happened after Hassoun left his unit or why he ended up in Lebanon, but they said investigations would focus on Hassoun's account of the situation.

    Rodriguez said Hassoun was not "picked up" by military officials but instead "came to link up" with embassy personnel.

    Lawrence Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said officials were being guarded about Hassoun's situation.

    "I'm saying we don't know and there's no sense speculating, because most of the speculation to this point has been confused," Di Rita said. "He's at the U.S. Embassy compound. He's alive. And those are two things we're very grateful for. And beyond that, we'll have more to say when we have it to say."



    Anyone besides me gets the smell of 3 day old fish here?


  3. #3
    Marine free, but mystery unresolved
    Events of past 18 days unknown; Navy plans non-criminal probe

    By Azadeh Moaveni, Tribune Newspapers. Special to the Los Angeles Times. Times staff writers Patrick J. McDonnell in Baghdad, David Kelly in Denver and Mark Mazzetti and Paul Richter in Washington con
    Published July 9, 2004

    BEIRUT -- A Marine missing from his unit in Iraq for more than two weeks was safely with U.S. officials here Thursday, but his appearance at the American Embassy compound did little to dispel the mystery surrounding a bizarre disappearance.

    Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who has been variously listed as absent without authorization, captured and held hostage under threat of beheading, met with U.S. officials and was taken to the embassy, U.S. officials said.

    Hassoun's relatives in Utah said they spoke to him and that he was being transferred to a U.S. military base in Germany.

    Pentagon officials said Hassoun was not under detention but said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service was conducting what an official described as a non-criminal probe.

    "The investigation is ongoing, and we don't know how he got there or what went on between the time that he was reported missing from his unit until he got into Lebanon," said Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez at the Pentagon.

    A defense official in Washington said Hassoun called the defense attache at the U.S. Embassy and asked him to meet him at a coffee shop in Beirut. But when the attache showed up, Hassoun was not there. Hassoun called again and was picked up three hours later at the shop and taken to the embassy, arriving there about 6 p.m. local time Thursday.

    U.S. officials could offer no new details on how Hassoun spent the 18 days during which he disappeared from his unit near Fallujah and reappeared 500 miles away in a neighborhood in Tripoli where many of his relatives reside. That neighborhood was hit Thursday by gunfire that left two people dead. There was speculation that the violence may have been the result of anger over Hassoun's service with U.S. forces.

    While officials shed no new light on Hassoun's disappearance, several Marines in Iraq said Hassoun was distraught after witnessing the death of a gunner hit at point-blank range with a rocket-propelled grenade or other large round.

    "Seeing something like that would upset anyone," said one Marine based near Fallujah. Hassoun was posted near Fallujah when he became what the Marines described as absent without leave.

    Defense officials in Washington avoided saying Thursday that Hassoun had deserted. They refused to comment on speculation that his capture and threatened slaying was a hoax. They also declined to comment on reports Hassoun is being transferred to a military base in Germany for questioning.

    However, one White House official involved in counterterrorism, asked whether Hassoun was a deserter, said that "not interested in serving is a better way to put it."

    Desertion charges possible

    If an investigation found Hassoun improperly left the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, where he served as a translator, he could be charged with desertion, a military offense that carries the maximum punishment of the death penalty, although no soldier has been executed for desertion since World War II.

    A Florida National Guardsman -- a self-described conscientious objector -- accused of desertion in a high-profile case was court-martialed last month and sentenced to a year in prison and given a bad conduct discharge, a step that denies future benefits.

    Hassoun's disappearance has been shadowed by contradictory accounts of his fate. He was photographed as a hostage, blindfolded and threatened with execution. An Islamist Web site reported the Lebanese-American beheaded last weekend, but the account was disputed the next day by another Web site. A little known band of Iraqi militants released a statement saying they were holding Hassoun hostage. If he was a hostage, no explanation has been offered on how he escaped.

    Some reports of his kidnapping said he was lured from his base by an Arab woman and then seized; others reported he had tired of the fighting, abandoned his post and tried to make his way to Lebanon.

    Family frightened

    By midweek, family members in Utah and Lebanon began to tell reporters they had been given an irrefutable sign that Hassoun was free and healthy but refused to say how they knew.

    He evidently became an issue in the dominantly Sunni city of Tripoli, where Hassoun's relatives live on a working-class street of densely packed apartment blocks. At least two people were killed and one wounded when clashes erupted. Gunfights apparently broke out between members of Hassoun's clan and neighbors enraged over his participation in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

    Clan divisions run deep in Tripoli, Lebanon's second-largest city, and the feud between the two clans dated to long before Hassoun's capture, according to local accounts. Still, the Marine's family appeared rattled, using cars to barricade their street before locking themselves in their homes.

    Reached by phone in Tripoli, Sami Hassoun, brother of the missing Marine, said family members are frightened for their safety and hoped to reach the embassy before Hassoun is flown out of the country.
    Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...l=chi-news-hed


    Ellie


  4. #4
    U.S. Marine Leaves Lebanon for Germany
    By REUTERS

    Published: July 9, 2004


    Filed at 11:59 a.m. ET

    BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese-born U.S. marine who went missing in Iraq and was at one point thought to have been beheaded left Lebanon on a U.S. military plane bound for Germany Friday, witnesses and U.S. officials said.

    Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, whose disappearance from his unit in Iraq, apparent abduction and reappearance in Lebanon weeks later have been mired in confusion, is expected to return to the United States after a few days in Germany.

    Advertisement


    A Marine Corps spokesman in Washington said a preliminary inquiry suggested he had deserted his unit in Iraq on June 21. His status was changed to ``captured'' a week later, after video footage showed him being held hostage. The Naval Criminal Investigative service is still investigating.

    Hassoun turned himself over to the U.S. embassy in Beirut on Thursday. Members of his family who saw him there said he seemed healthy and in relatively good spirits.

    ``There were mixed feelings,'' his brother Sami said. ``We were excited to see him... We tried to cheer him up. He was tense, you could see on his face that he'd been through a lot. But there was a small smile on his face, he was happy to see us.''

    A statement from the U.S. embassy said Hassoun left Lebanon at 1535 (1135 GMT). Military officials said he would go to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for ``physical and mental evaluations, as well as an extensive debriefing process.''

    Hassoun's family has refused to elaborate on the circumstances of the marine's disappearance from his unit or how he made his way to Lebanon.

    A linguist from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, he was believed to have been taken hostage and was at one point shown in a video tape distributed by an Islamist group in Iraq with a sword poised near his head.

    Islamist Web Sites later reported he was executed. But another Islamist group then said he had been spared after pledging to leave the U.S. military.

    Hassoun was born in Lebanon and emigrated to the United States four years ago. He has family in and around the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli and also in West Jordan, Utah.

    Two people were killed in Tripoli Thursday in a gunfight between Hassoun's family and a rival family which witnesses said was sparked by taunts about Hassoun's relationship with the U.S. military and his family being U.S. agents.

    http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/...on-marine.html


    Ellie


  5. #5
    Gunbattle Near U.S. Marine Hassoun's Lebanon Home


    Email this story

    Jul 8, 3:26 PM (ET)

    TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - A gunbattle erupted Thursday near the family home of a Lebanese-born U.S. Marine who had been missing in Iraq, killing at least two people and wounding several others, witnesses said.
    Relatives of Wassef Ali Hassoun, who arrived at the U.S. embassy in Beirut Thursday, traded fire with another family who taunted them by referring to the Marine and his family as U.S. agents, said the witnesses.

    The gunbattle occurred in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli.

    Hassoun, 24, had been missing from his unit since June 21, and at one point was reported on an Internet site to have been killed by militants holding him hostage.

    U.S. officials said Hassoun had been picked up in Beirut after making contact and was safe at the embassy. They gave few details.

    The northern Lebanon area where Hassoun's family lives is a stronghold of deeply religious Sunni Muslims with strong clan ties. Blood feuds among rival families are not uncommon.



    http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/413803|top|07-08-2004::15:44|reuters.html


    Ellie


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