US hostage 'went AWOL'

2004-06-30 11:10

Washington - A Lebanese-American Marine under threat of beheading by an armed group in Iraq deserted his post in shock after seeing one of his sergeants blown apart and was heading to his native Lebanon when he was kidnapped, the New York Times said on Wednesday.

The daily said Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun has been missing since June 21 but marine officials had not announced this until late on Sunday, hours after Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape from an armed group threatening to behead a US marine unless all detainees in US-led coalition prisons in Iraq were freed.

A marine officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the New York Times that after suffering emotional trauma from seeing one of his sergeants blown up by a mortar shell Ali Hassoun tried to make his way home to Lebanon but was betrayed by Iraqis he had befriended on his base.

"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.

Sword hanging over his head

The tape from the armed group calling itself the "Islamic Retaliation Movement - Armed Resistance Wing", showed a blindfolded man with a moustache, dressed in camouflage garb, with a sword brandished over his head and close-ups of identification cards.

The group said it had abducted the missing marine after "infiltrating a US military base in Iraq" but gave no deadline for carrying out the threatened execution.

Hassoun went missing on June 21 near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, although military officials have not confirmed that he was being held hostage.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera said on Tuesday it had received video footage of the execution of US soldier Keith Maupin who had been held captive for more than two months. Maupin was the first US soldier to be taken hostage since the war in Iraq began.

Beside Ali Hassoun, a Pakistani hostage has also been threatened with decapitation by his kidnappers unless detained Iraqis are released.

- AFP