BEIRUT, 10 July 2004 — The mystery of a US Marine, who went missing in Iraq only to resurface in Lebanon 19 days later, deepened yesterday after Washington announced official investigations into a case it said had been misrepresented.
“Almost nothing that has been reported about Cpl. (Wassef Ali) Hassoun has been accurate,” Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita announced in Washington, declining to go into further details.
The US military in Iraq announced an investigation into the case of Hassoun, who was at one point feared beheaded after footage of armed captors holding the marine was released to an Arabic satellite channel.
“The circumstances regarding his whereabouts between 19 June and 8 July are under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service,” a statement said.
Hassoun left Lebanon for Germany, accompanied by minders on board a US Army C-130 aircraft yesterday afternoon. Military officials said he was headed for Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for “physical and mental evaluations, as well as an extensive debriefing process”.
“We visited him in the embassy in Awkar on Thursday evening and said our goodbyes as he was due to leave Lebanon early this morning,” his brother Sami said.
He declined to elaborate on what he knew about the circumstances of his brother’s resurfacing. “Our only interest is that he is safe and sound. We were very happy to see him even for just 10 minutes. He seemed a bit tired and tense and we tried to calm him down, restore his spirits and ease the stress of the difficult position he finds himself in.”
Two people were killed in Tripoli on 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 US military and his family being US agents.
