Iraq group says US Marine taken to safety

8.25am

DUBAI - An Iraqi Islamist group said it had moved abducted US marine Wassef Ali Hassoun to "a place of safety" after he pledged not to return to the American armed forces, Al Jazeera television said on Monday.

Al Jazeera said the announcement came in a statement it received from the Islamic Response Movement, the same group it reported on June 27 as claiming to have kidnapped Hassoun and threatening to behead him.

In the statement the group did not say where Hassoun had been taken, Al Jazeera said. It gave no further details.

Eight days ago Al Jazeera showed a video of a blindfolded man dressed in camouflage sitting in a chair with a hand holding a sword above his head. A Marine Corps identity card named him Wassef Ali Hassoun.

It quoted the Islamic Response Movement as saying it had kidnapped a US marine after luring him from a US base.

On Sunday, a group calling itself the Army of Ansar al-Sunna denied reports on Islamist websites that said it had decapitated Hassoun, a marine linguist of Lebanese descent from the First Marine Expeditionary Force, officially missing since June 21.

The New York Times reported last week Hassoun may have deserted the military in Iraq because he was emotionally traumatised and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way to his native Lebanon.

The newspaper quoted a marine officer in Iraq as saying he believed the captive was betrayed by Iraqis he befriended on his base and ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.

The officer said Hassoun was shaken up by seeing one of his sergeants blown apart by a mortar shell.

Hassoun, who obtained US citizenship after emigrating to the United States four years ago and joining the military, was last seen on June 19 in Al Anbar Province. He was reported missing when he failed to show up for duty the next day.

Another Lebanese hostage, Hussein Ali Alyan, was killed in Iraq last month along with two Iraqi colleagues. Another three Lebanese hostages were freed.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq