Now Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is being said to have deserted his unit prior to being captured by insurgents in Iraq.
The American Marine who kidnappers are threatening to behead deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, the New York Times reported today, quoting an unidentified Marine officer.The officer, who spoke to the Times on the condition of anonymity, said he believed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.
The explanation of Hassoun's capture came out Tuesday, the same day a roadside bomb ripped through a U.S. military convoy, killing three Marines and providing graphic evidence that the formal end of the U.S. occupation has not halted attacks on American forces in Iraq. Two Marines also were wounded in the blast, which occurred on a four-lane highway in the Rustamiyah district.
The officer told the Times that Hassoun, a 24-year-old Marine linguist who was born in Lebanon, was shaken up after he saw one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.
"It was very disturbing to him," the officer said. "He wanted to go home and quit the game, but since he was relatively early in his deployment, that was not going to happen anytime soon. So he talked to some folks on base he befriended, because they were all fellow Muslims, and they helped sneak him off. Once off, instead of helping him get home, they turned him over to the bad guys."
Hassoun, a fluent Arabic-speaker who had been living with his family in West Jordan, Utah, outside Salt Lake City, joined the Marine Corps to work as a translator.
His stateside brother says it doesn't seem right.
"To me it has no foundation. It's all wrong," Mohammad Hassoun told The Associated Press Tuesday night.Posted by Alan at June 30, 2004 05:04 PMHassoun's family in Salt Lake City continue to pray, and asked the same of the rest of the world, said their spokesman, Tarek Nosseir. The capture "is what has been destined upon us, and we accept it," he said.