posted on June 29, 2004 08:47:53 PM new
Abducted Marine Had Deserted the Military
By JEFFREY GETTLEMANand NICK MADIGAN
Published: June 30, 2004
AGHDAD, Iraq, June 29 — The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had 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, a Marine officer said Tuesday.
The officer, who spoke 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 officer said Corporal 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."
"It's all we know right now," the officer added.
Corporal 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.
About two months ago, he told a cousin that several American deserters had escaped by bribing Iraqis to help get them out of the country.
"He said a lot of soldiers, they don't want to die, especially when they see someone dying in front of them," said the cousin, Tarek Hassoun, who lives in Salt Lake City.
Marine officials said Sunday night that Corporal Hassoun had been missing since June 21. On Sunday, the Qatar-based television network Al Jazeera broadcast a videotape that showed him blindfolded with a sword over his head.
According to a statement provided with the video, an obscure group called The Islamic Reaction said it had abducted him near Falluja and was threatening to behead him unless American forces released all Iraqi prisoners.
The group, which also identified itself as the security wing of the 20th Revolution Regiment, a reference to the Arab uprising after World War I, did not give a deadline for the release or execution.
When Corporal Hassoun was first shown in captivity on video Sunday, Marine officials were reluctant to confirm that he had been kidnapped. On Monday, they acknowledged that they were now classifying his status as "captured."
Masked men have snatched dozens of foreigners in the past several months. On Tuesday, three Turks were freed after by their captors.
But several hostages have been executed. The latest victim appears to be Specialist Keith Matthew Maupin, an American soldier who vanished after an ambush on his convoy near Baghdad on April 9.
On Monday, Al Jazeera, which has been first to broadcast a number of videos showing the killing of Americans, broadcast a video it said ended with kidnappers shooting Specialist Maupin in the head. Army officials said they could not confirm that he had been killed.
Intelligence officials said it is not clear if the kidnappings are coordinated, although they suspect that some of the captors are at least loosely tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant thought to be behind much of the mayhem in Iraq.
On Monday night, Muslims in Salt Lake City gathered at the Khadeeja Mosque, one of three mosques in the city, to pray for Corporal Hassoun.
Mahdi Jaff, 38, an Iraqi Kurd who immigrated to the United States 10 years ago, said he had met Corporal Hassoun a few months ago while the marine was home on leave.
"I loved him when I met him," Mr. Jaff said. Mr. Jaff said Corporal Hassoun had stayed true to his Muslim values while serving in the military.
When he heard the news that a member of the Hassoun family had been seized in Iraq, Mr. Jaff said he did not know who it was.
"He has a lot of brothers so, at first, I was not sure who was captured, but then when I saw the picture, I said, `Oh, man, that's him,' ' Mr. Jaff said. "I was really shocked that it was him."
"Those people will not negotiate," Mr. Jaff said of Corporal Hassoun's captors. "He just has to wait for his time to come. It's just like when someone would be sent to Saddam Hussein's jails; he would send a message to his family and say, `I'm gone.' "
Others in Salt Lake City were also praying Monday night. About 25 people stood in the rain on the steps of the Utah State Capitol, pleading for Corporal Hassoun's release.
Pamela Atkinson, 68, of Salt Lake City, led the group in a prayer to God.
"As the insurgents threaten his life, we ask that Corporal Hassoun and his family feel your loving arms around them," she said.
Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Baghdad for this article and Nick Madigan from Salt Lake City. Melissa Sanford contributed reporting from Salt Lake City.
posted on June 30, 2004 06:58:10 AM new
Yep. The more publicity and anti-war propaganda that gets spread around the worse it will get too.
As far as this guy being a deserter, I don't see that it matters (even if this is true). If they should manage to rescue the guy he'll be in deep trouble, and maybe it's even his own fault for being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be.
But he's still a marine, and that what counts.
But negotiating is a mistake for any of these prisoners. The only way to get this stuff to stop is to prove that it doesn't work.
That also means going so far as to stop reporting it. If no one knows it's happening, what's the point of the terrorists continuing it? What's the chance of getting the press to go along with that line of thinking?
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We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing -- Anonymous
