SALON

David Rising

Monday, Jul 12, 2004 2:37 PM UTC

Military questions Marine who was missing

By

Topics:

The U.S. Marine who mysteriously vanished in Iraq and reappeared in Lebanon nearly three weeks later has been cooperating fully with a team of specialists questioning him at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, the supervisor of debriefing told The Associated Press on Monday.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was being debriefed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center by intelligence specialists, psychologists, physicians and a Muslim chaplain, said Army Lt. Col. Sally Harvey, a clinical neuropsychologist at the hospital who is overseeing the questioning.

“He has fully engaged in the process,” Harvey said in a telephone interview from Landstuhl. “His spirits are good and he’s participated fully.”

Harvey was not permitted to say what Hassoun might have told investigators about his disappearance June 20 from his base near the troubled Iraqi city of Fallujah.

In the three weeks that the 24-year-old was missing, various conflicting reports emerged about him — first that he was beheaded, then that he was alive. Arab television on June 27 showed a videotape of him with his eyes covered by a white blindfold and a sword hanging over his head.

He then showed up July 8 at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, but it was unclear how he reached Lebanon and contacted American officials. The Navy has said it is investigating whether the entire kidnapping might have been a hoax.

But Harvey said the questioning at Landstuhl is no different than what has been undergone by others who have escaped captivity in Iraq.

“It’s exactly the same process that Jessica Lynch went through … it’s exactly the same process Tommy Hamill went through — there is nothing different, nothing unique, about how we are treating Cpl. Hassoun,” she said.

Pfc. Lynch, an Army supply clerk, was captured March 23, 2003 in Iraq and was later found by U.S. commandos in a hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah, while Hamill, a civilian truck driver, was taken hostage in Iraq this April 9 and managed to escape his captors on his own. Both were treated at Landstuhl before returning to the United States.

The debriefing team was conducting “survival, evasion, resistance, and escape” questioning of Hassoun, and the results would be passed back to try and help others in Iraq, said Marine Corps Europe spokesman Maj. Tim Keefe.

“Some of those lessons can go immediately back to people that are there and in that way they may have something that can save someone else’s life,” Keefe said.

Hassoun is expected to be able to return to his home unit in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, “in a couple days,” Keefe said.

On his arrival at Landstuhl on Friday, doctors said that Hassoun seemed to be in good health but had lost 20 pounds and was having trouble sleeping.

He is now sleeping better, and has been talking on the telephone with his mother in Lebanon and his brother in Utah as well as other family members, said hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw.

“He is in good spirits, he’s doing well,” she said. “Today he’s going to get a haircut and shave and look like a Marine again.”

She said that the debriefing team had been speaking with Hassoun regularly.

“Most of it’s just conversations, and it’s done in an atmosphere as comfortable as possible for him,” she said.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations