U.S. Marine Is Safe, but Still Subject Of Mystery

Man Once Feared Dead Arrives at Beirut Embassy

BEIRUT, July 8 -- A Lebanese-born U.S. Marine who had been reported captured and beheaded in Iraq was brought alive to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut on Thursday night, but few details about his case were available, U.S. officials said.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 24, a translator with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, arrived at the heavily guarded embassy about 6 p.m., said spokeswoman Elizabeth Wharton. "An embassy vehicle picked him up in Beirut and brought him to the embassy," she said.

The confirmation that Hassoun was at the embassy ended days of uncertainty about his safety and whereabouts, while family members in Lebanon and Utah had refused to confirm or deny reports that he was present in this country.

Hassoun had disappeared from his Marine base near Fallujah on June 19 and later was shown on al-Jazeera satellite television, blindfolded, with a sword hanging over his head. A group calling itself Islamic Response asserted responsibility for his kidnapping and threatened to kill him.

A militant group claiming to be the Ansar al-Sunna Army said on a Web site Saturday that it had beheaded the Marine. But the group said Sunday that it had not issued the statement, and a posting on another Internet site said Hassoun was alive.

On Monday, al-Jazeera reported that it had received a report from Islamic militants saying that Hassoun was in a safe place and had promised to quit the Marines.

On Wednesday, reports surfaced that he was in Lebanon.

At the Pentagon on Thursday, Army Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials had little information about Hassoun. "The investigation is ongoing, and we don't know how he got there or what went on between the time that he was reported missing from his unit until he got into Lebanon," Rodriguez said at a media briefing. "He came to the embassy compound, and under our control, of his own accord."

Hassoun's mother and father, one of his brothers and his new Lebanese wife joined him at the embassy in the Awkar neighborhood of Beirut, according to family members.

"I was so excited, but he's always calm and steady," said a brother, Sami Hassoun, 26. "We shook hands and hugged and kissed."

"He's alive now, he's safe and sound -- that's all I want from God," he added.

But in Tripoli, 50 miles north of Beirut, where Hassoun's family lives, a fight broke out and a relative of Hassoun shot and killed two people and injured a third person, Lebanese officials reported. Other Tripoli residents had accused Hassoun of being a traitor because he left Lebanon and fought with the Marines in Iraq, his brother said.

The family member, Mohamad Said Hassoun, was arrested in the killings, according to internal security forces in Tripoli.

"Everybody here is calling us traitors," Sami Hassoun said. "I think somebody pushed those people to this to try to hurt my family and my relatives. There's no background for these things."