Beirut
The Navy said this week that it was investigating whether the supposed kidnapping of a U.S. Marine was a hoax. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun went missing from his unit in Fallujah a few weeks ago, and he was presumed AWOL until Arab television showed a videotape of him in the purported custody of terrorists. A few days later, a militant group claimed to have beheaded him. But then Hassoun showed up at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon, the country where he grew up and still has family, leading some to speculate that the video was faked to cover up a desertion. Hassoun was transferred to a military hospital in Germany this week for a routine post-captivity debriefing by the Army. The Navy’s official questioning of Hassoun won’t begin until he returns to the U.S.
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