The AP is reporting that the US military is now investigating the abduction of Wassef Ali Hassoun, who was even reported to have been beheaded, as an elaborate hoax. Apparently, Hassoun is safe at home in Beirut with his parents.
After the Islamic group Ansar al-Sunna Army denied abducting Hassoun and beheading him, reports began alleging that Hassoun was “safe” and had been released after promising to quit the US military. Conflicting stories from the family of Hassoun began surfacing. Now, it seems that the original story about the missing marine was probably correct:
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who is now being held hostage by militants in Iraq, was thought to have deserted his unit when he was first reported missing on June 21, military representatives told NBC News. The officials believed Hassoun was headed for Lebanon and a reunion with his wife, they said. Hassoun, who is of of Lebanese descent, was originally classified as a deserter because of this theory, a Pentagon official told NBC News.
The intrigue began on June 19, when Corporal Hassoun, who was serving his second stint in Iraq, disappeared from his unit near Fallujah.
Reports about him first surfaced on June 27, with Al-Jazeera television claiming that a group called the Islamic Response Movement had lured and kidnapped him from a US base.
The brief video aired showed a blindfolded man in army fatigues seated in a chair with a hand holding a sword above his head. An identity card named him as Wassef Ali Hassoun.
The plot thickened when the New York Times quoted a marine officer as saying that Corporal Hassoun was betrayed by the Iraqis he befriended at his base.
Emotionally traumatised by images of his sergeant being blown up by a mortar shell, he wanted ‘to go home and quit the game’.
Chances of official termination of his deployment, however, were slim so he enlisted the help of the Muslims he had befriended to sneak home.
So, Hassoun went so far as to fake his own abduction and death in order to get out of the Marines. While there is no evidence that Hassoun quit for any moral or principled reason, the Imperial Forces shrunk a bit. Good.