U.S. Marine Leaves Lebanon for Germany
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By Hassan al-Jabali
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The Lebanese-born U.S. marine who went missing in Iraq (news - web sites) 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.
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.
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