Re:Marine's Family Hopes to Use Contacts

Date: June 28, 2004

"Lebanese Relatives of U.S. Marine Have Contacts in Iraq

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AP) -- Ali Hassoun sat chain-smoking Monday in his fourth-floor apartment, waiting for word on his son, a Lebanese-American U.S. Marine threatened with beheading by his captors in Iraq.

Another of his sons, Sami, talked with worried relatives, who said contacts were under way with politicians and Muslim clerics in Lebanon and Islamist groups in Iraq to secure the release of Wassef Ali Hassoun.

"We are trying to send word through all channels that he is Lebanese, Arab and a Muslim," Abdullah Hassoun, a member of the extended family and head of Al-Safira municipality, told The Associated Press.

"He must be released by his kidnappers," he said.

Wassef Ali Hassoun, missing from his unit in Iraq for nearly a week, was shown blindfolded and captive in videotape aired Sunday on the pan-Arab satellite news station Al-Jazeera. The station said the militants demanded all Iraqis in "occupation jails" be released or Hassoun would be killed.

Ali and Sami Hassoun declined to comment, with Abdullah Hassoun saying they'd been advised by Wassef Ali Hassoun's older brother in the United States not to talk to the press. The Marine has family in West Jordan, Utah, in the United States.

In the videotape, Hassoun was wearing military fatigues and had a white blindfold covering his eyes. The kidnappers claimed to have infiltrated a Marine outpost, lured Hassoun outside and abducted him.

Hassoun's relatives in Lebanon said he hails from the town of Al-Safira in northern Lebanon's remote Dinniyah mountain region, but lived in the northern port city of Tripoli, 85 kilometers (50 miles) north of Beirut until he emigrated to the United States in the early 1990s.

It was unclear whether Hassoun's kidnappers were linked to Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who claimed responsibility for the decapitation deaths of American businessman Nicholas Berg and South Korean translator Kim Sun-il last week.

Arabs working with the Americans in Iraq also have been targets of Iraqi insurgents, and at times the motives for kidnappings haven't been clear.

Militants have kidnapped at least five Lebanese hostages in Iraq in recent months -- all for financial reasons.

Four of those kidnapped were later released but one, Hussein Alyan, was shot dead and his body dumped beside a road.

Hassoun's West Jordan relatives on Sunday asked people around the world to pray for his return.

"We pray and we plead for his safe release and we ask all people of the world to join us in our prayers," Hassoun family friend and spokesman Tarek Nosseir said outside the family's Utah home.

©2004 by The Associated Press. "