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Muslim Marine who deserted in Iraq in 2004 back in U.S.

Jun 30, 2014 9:06 am By Robert Spencer

WassefAliHassoun“In a February 2005 interview with the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Hassoun’s brother, Mohamad, said Wassef Ali Hassoun was a victim of anti-Muslim bias in the U.S. military.” This is the same U.S. military, remember, that kept promoting Nidal Malik Hasan even after he had alarmed his coworkers with talk of jihad and had been in touch with Anwar al-Awlaki. This is the same U.S. military that even after Hasan murdered thirteen Americans at Fort Hood in explicit fulfillment of Islamic jihad teachings, affirmed that preserving “diversity” in the military was even more important than such jihad mass murders.

Hassoun has probably resurfaced because he saw the Obama Administration trade five jihad terrorists for another presumed deserter, Bowe Bergdahl, and figured he could get a good deal now.

“Marine who disappeared in Iraq in 2004 back in US,” by Robert Burns, Associated Press, June 29, 2014:

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Marine who was declared a deserter nearly 10 years ago after disappearing in Iraq and then returning to the U.S. claiming he had been kidnapped, only to disappear again, is back in U.S. custody, officials said Sunday.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, 34, turned himself in and was being flown Sunday from an undisclosed location in the Middle East to Norfolk, Virginia. He is to be moved Monday to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, according to a spokesman, Capt. Eric Flanagan.

Maj. Gen. Raymond Fox, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force at Lejeune, will determine whether to court martial Hassoun.

In a written statement from its headquarters at the Pentagon, the Marine Corps said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service “worked with” Hassoun to turn himself in and return to the U.S. to face charges.

Hassoun disappeared from his unit in Iraq’s western desert in June 2004. The following month he turned up unharmed in Beirut, Lebanon and blamed his disappearance on Islamic extremist kidnappers. He was returned to Lejeune and was about to face the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing when he disappeared again.

Flanagan, said the Hassoun case is unrelated to the matter of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who disappeared from his post in eastern Afghanistan in June 2009 under unexplained circumstances. Members of Bergdahl’s unit have said he walked away on his own and should face desertion charges.

The Bergdahl case triggered a flood of controversy in part because of questions about the deal the U.S. struck with the Taliban to gain his release May 31, after five years in captivity, in exchange for freeing five senior Taliban commanders from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Bergdahl has not commented publicly on the circumstances of his disappearance and the Army has made no charges against him.

It is unclear where Hassoun, 34, has spent the past nine years after disappearing during a visit with relatives in Utah in December 2004. Nor is it known why he chose to turn himself in now. He was born in Lebanon and is a naturalized American citizen.

He enlisted in the Marine Corps in January 2002 and was trained as a motor vehicle operator. At the time of his disappearance from a Marine camp in Fallujah in western Iraq in June 2004 he was serving as an Arabic translator. That was a particularly difficult year for the Marines in Iraq. In April they launched an offensive to retake Fallujah from Islamic extremists but were ordered to pull back, only to launch a second offensive in November that succeeded in regaining control of the city but at the expense of dozens of Marine lives.

Seven days after his June 2004 disappearance, a photo of a blindfolded Hassoun with a sword poised above his head turned up on Al-Jazeera television. A group called the National Islamic Resistance/1920 Revolution Brigade claimed to be holding him captive.

On July 8, 2004, Hassoun contacted American officials in Beirut, Lebanon, claiming to have been kidnapped. He was returned to the U.S. and eventually to Camp Lejeune. After a Navy investigation, the military charged Hassoun with desertion, loss of government property, theft of a military firearm for allegedly leaving the Fallujah camp with a 9 mm service pistol, and theft of a Humvee.

Shortly after his return to the U.S., Hassoun said in a public statement that he had been captured by insurgents in Iraq and was still a loyal Marine. “I did not desert my post,” he told reporters. “I was captured and held against my will by anti-coalition forces for 19 days. This was a very difficult and challenging time for me.”

In the initial months following his return to Lejeune, Hassoun was not held in confinement because charges had not yet been brought against him. He was considered non-deployable until the case was resolved, but he was allowed to make personal trips.

A January 2005 hearing on the matter was canceled when Hassoun failed to return to Camp Lejeune from his Utah visit. His commanders then officially classified him as a deserter, authorizing civilian police to apprehend him.

A short time later Hassoun was been placed on a Navy list of “most wanted” fugitives. A mug shot of him appeared on a Navy criminal justice Web site, which claimed the missing corporal used the alias “Jafar.”

In a February 2005 interview with the Associated Press in Salt Lake City, Hassoun’s brother, Mohamad, said Wassef Ali Hassoun was a victim of anti-Muslim bias in the U.S. military. The Marine Corps denied this….

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Filed Under: Lebanon, United States Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Jaladhi says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 9:18 am

    Muslims are always victims even when they are perpetrators, invaders, rapists, murderers, etc, etc .. This is the standard MO that Mo/allah taught them from day one while they went on killing and raping people of Medina and Mecca..Hand out most severe punishment to this deserter, traitor.

  2. Jay Boo says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 11:19 am

    Obama and his MB associates must have agreed to work out a pardon agreement just before he leaves office.

  3. voegelinian says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 11:54 am

    “Muslim Marine” — that’s like a fish walking on land; an alien amphibian oxymoron.

  4. umbra says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 4:26 pm

    Semper infidalis …

  5. Kepha says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 4:35 pm

    An American deserter deserves an American firing squad, I guess. Or, perhaps, the inside of an American military brig is better than being at liberty anywhere in the Islamic world.

  6. mike ryan says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 9:25 pm

    “Anti-muslim bias in the Marine Corps”? Bull! I’ve known Muslm marines who’ve never had a single complaint about “bias” against them due to their religion.

    • rabrooks says

      Jul 3, 2014 at 8:56 pm

      Nuttin’ personal…. Marines are ruff-ruff on everybody!

  7. dumbledoresarmy says

    Jun 30, 2014 at 9:38 pm

    Interrogate.

    **Thoroughly**.

    I wouldn’t trust a single thing he says unless and until it can be independently verified, preferably from non-Muslim sources.

    (If the US military had any sense, they’d call in the IDF and the Mossad for some advice and assistance in turning this fellow inside out, as they – IDF, Mossad – have people who know fluent Arabic, understand Arab/ Muslim “culture” a damn sight better than the average Yank, and have quite a good track record of being able to get mohammedans to sing like canaries.)

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