Re: Officials: Little Info on Missing Marine

Date: June 28, 2004

"Little Information on Fate of Missing Marine, Officials Say

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 — American military officials said today that a marine shown on videotape as a prisoner of insurgents and being threatened with beheading had been missing for more than a week in western Iraq, but that the military had been reluctant to publicize his disappearance because the area is so dangerous for Americans.

"We knew we had a missing marine out there, but in a hostile area like this, where you're surrounded by the enemy, the last thing you want to do is raise a flag and broadcast this," a Marine spokesman, Maj. T.V. Johnson, said.

Marine officials said they had little information on the fate of the missing marine, Cpl. Wassef Hassoun, who was shown blindfolded and with a sword hanging over his head in a videotape broadcast Sunday night by Al Jazeera television.

"We have no idea where he is," Major Johnson said.

Corporal Hassoun's father, Ali Mohammed Hassoun, appealed from his home in Tripoli, Lebanon, for the captors to show mercy to his 24-year-old son, a Muslim born in Lebanon, and for Islamic clergy to intervene on his behalf, according to news agencies.

"I appeal to the kidnappers and to their conscience and faith to release my son. He is not a fighter," Mr. Hassoun said, according to an Associated Press dispatch, which also quoted family members as saying the younger Hassoun emigrated to the United States in the early 1990's and had settled in West Jordan, Utah.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt of the Army, the military coalition's deputy operations chief in Baghdad, said Corporal Hassoun appeared to have gone "on an unauthorized absence."

"Based on his personal situation, there was reason to suspect that he was heading over to Lebanon," General Kimmitt said, without providing further details.

Marine officials said Corporal Hassoun was last seen in Iraq on June 19. He had been assigned to drive trucks and Humvees in western Iraq, where resistance to the occupation has run the highest.

After Corporal Hassoun failed to report for duty on June 20, an investigation was begun, Major Johnson said, with troops scouring the area and questioning other marines about where Corporal Hassoun was last seen, what he was wearing and who was he had been with.

On Sunday night, a little-known group calling itself the "Islamic Reaction," which referred to itself as the security wing of the 20th Revolution Regiment, said in a videotaped message that it had lured Corporal Hassoun from an American military base and abducted him. In the short, grainy video, the camera lingers on a Marine identification card that says "Hassoun, Wassef Ali" and "Active Duty."

Marine officials, who were reluctant on Sunday to confirm that Corporal Hassoun had been abducted, said today that the man in the video was most likely him.

"From all we know, watching that video, comparing it to pictures we have and other information, we have great reason to believe that yes, the man in the video is Corporal Hassoun," Major Johnson said.

But the mystery is, how did an Iraqi militant group capture a United States marine, perhaps without firing a shot? Marines are almost never alone in public and generally do not leave their bases on their own. At Camp Falluja, the largest Marine base in the area, Marine guards refuse to step past the guard gate, saying their orders require them to stay on the base at all times.

"It's unthinkable," Major Johnson said of Corporal Hassoun's predicament. "No marine ever expects to be in the hands of the enemy."

The kidnappers, though they did not give a deadline, threatened to kill the corporal unless the United States released all Iraqi prisoners. Major Johnson said there was no room for negotiation. "We don't negotiate with terrorists," he said.

Four other men, three Turks and a Pakistani, are in similar circumstances, with their kidnappers saying the hostages will be beheaded unless their demands are met.

American officials have linked many of the kidnappings and terror attacks in Iraq to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian thought to have been trained in chemical weapons in Afghanistan.

©2004 The New York Times Company "