Posted on 02/05/2005 8:03:59 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
The brother of the AWOL Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun says there is nothing in a 3-inch-thick desertion case file that proves the Utah Marine wasn't captured by militants in Iraq last summer.
"The entire report is all hearsay," Mohamad Hassoun told The Salt Lake Tribune on Friday. "No one has any proof or any evidence."
Mohamad Hassoun, who said he kept the copy of the file his brother brought home in December, also can't reconcile how the Marines could levy a desertion charge after their "terrific support" during his two-month repatriation.
"The way they treated him was like they believed him. And then they charged him," Mohamad Hassoun lamented. "I don't know if somebody in the Pentagon has an agenda, but we feel there is a bias. Someone higher up is making decisions and pushing [the Marines]."
The shock of the Dec. 9 charge against Wassef Hassoun - a Muslim with dual Lebanese and American citizenship - caused the 25-year-old to flee last month, Mohamad said.
What's more, suggestions from the report that Wassef Hassoun was a romantic rogue who had affairs with multiple women enraged his Lebanese bride, Mohamad Hassoun said. The couple were already quarreling because Wassef Hassoun failed to file his wife's petition for a green card that would allow her to stay in the United States.
"She found out at the same time about both things," he said. "They had a fight."
Her visa expired Jan. 12, and she has returned to Lebanon.
Mohamad Hassoun divulged those details during a conference call Friday with The Tribune and Michael Sands, a Los Angeles-based agent who is brokering a book deal for the West Jordan family.
"I want to tell our side of the story," Mohamad Hassoun said.
"What we went through and the emotions and the roller coaster and the media and everything."
The Marines and the family say they don't know where Wassef Hassoun is. Some news outlets have reported he withdrew cash from ATM machines in Canada and Lebanon after failing to return to his base, Camp Lejeune, N.C., on Jan. 5 after a holiday leave.
Wassef Hassoun had appeared on Dec. 21 for the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing on the charges, which also include theft, to determine if he should face a court martial. The hearing was cut short when Hassoun decided he wanted a civilian lawyer in addition to his Marine counsel. Another proceeding was to be scheduled in January.
Mohamad Hassoun, who had spent time with his brother at Camp Lejeune after his return, said the Marines had discussed issuing the corporal a medal for his purported captivity.
But after he went AWOL last month, the Naval Criminal Investigative Services listed him on its most wanted list along with fugitives charged with murder, terrorism and rape.
"I don't know if it's a religious bias or not, but there is some kind of bias against him," Mohamad Hassoun said.
Calls to Maj. Matt Morgan, a spokesman for Wassef Hassoun's 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, were not returned Friday. But Morgan told The Associated Press that any notion of Muslim bias is a "ridiculous allegation" and that the legal action was based solely on evidence, not religion.
Mohamad, however, said that even a charge of vehicle theft against his brother was flimsy. He said the defense attorney had told him that Wassef Hassoun had simply driven the Humvee in question from one side of the base to the other without permission.
The Marine's alleged theft of his 9mm service weapon can be pinned on militants, said Mohamad Hassoun, who absolutely believes his brother was abducted from his base near Fallujah on June 20.
A week later, he was shown on Arab television, blindfolded with a sword held above his head.
Wassef Hassoun, who had worked as an Arabic translator in Iraq, surfaced July 8 in Beirut, Lebanon. He was returned to Camp Lejeune for repatriation and eventually full duty.
The desertion charge is punishable by up to five years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. If he were convicted of desertion during wartime, it could be life in prison. But because he returned promptly from two prior trips home, the corporal was not considered a flight risk and allowed to come to Utah on holiday leave.
While the family awaits word, Mohamad Hassoun hopes a publisher will be interested in a story chronicling an immigrant family that first came to Ellis Island in 1910. He's counting on interest in a third-generation kid who volunteered for the Marine Corps shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and made international headlines last summer.
"We think it's a fabulous story," said Sands, whose prior work includes book deals for "30 Years of Fashion Fiascoes," and "From Rags to Bitches" by worst-dressed guru Mr. Blackwell.
Mohamad Hassoun hopes his brother will return to face the military charges and "clear the air. If you don't defend yourself, people will make their own assumptions."
Call the waaaahhhmbulance!
By his flight, Mohammed indicated "a consciousness of guilt".
So the terrorists that abducted him were really nice guys after all and instead of beheading him, they decided to drop him off in Lebanon to be with his family?
Doesn't make a difference...he's AWOL now.
The only reason that Hassoun's family can float this BS story is because the public isn't privy to just what evidence was present when the Marines found his personal effects in a safe-house in Fallujah. The Marines didn't have much evidence against him before that beyond some circumstantial evidence. I don't know what they found in Fallujah, but it must have been good because Hassoun was charged soon after.
No, he was UA. Now Hassoun is a deserter.
As far as I'm concerned, Hassoun never should have made it back to the states. When he turned himself in to the US Embassy in Lebanon, he should have been sent back to his unit in Iraq and executed on the battlefield.
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