Family begs for marine's life
2004-06-28 15:26
Washington - The family of a US Marine believed to be held by Islamic militants in Iraq has issued a plea for his captors to release him, US media reported on Monday.
"In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate, we accept destiny with its good and its bad," said Tarek Nosseir, a spokesperson for the family of Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun.
"We pray and we plead for his safe release and we ask all people of the world to join us in our prayers," said Nosseir, who heads the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake in the western US state of Utah.
Hassoun, of Lebanese descent, went missing on June 21 near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, although military officials were unable to confirm on Monday that he was being held hostage.
However, Arab news channel Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape on Sunday from a group calling itself the "Islamic Retaliation Movement - Armed Resistance Wing," which said it had abducted a Marine and would decapitate him unless all detainees in US-led coalition prisons were freed.
The tape showed a blindfolded, moustached man, dressed in camouflage garb, with a sword brandished over his head and close-ups of identification cards.
The group claims to have abducted the missing Marine, who is fluent in Arabic, after "infiltrating a US military base in Iraq," but gave no deadline for carrying out the threatened execution.