Vanishing Marine goes to trial

A US Marine who vanished from a base in Iraq and later wound up in Lebanon is set to face trial more than a decade after the puzzling case began.

Cpl. Wassef Hassoun’s court martial on desertion and other charges starts Monday at Camp Lejeune. Defense attorneys maintain that he was kidnapped in 2004 by insurgents and that later, after briefly returning to the US, he became tangled up in Lebanese courts for years.

Prosecutors say Hassoun fled his post in Iraq because he was unhappy with his deployment and didn’t like how US troops treated Iraqis. However, a September report from the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing acknowledges that prosecutors could have a hard time proving their largely circumstantial case because of the difficulty in tracking down witnesses.

The case began when Hassoun went missing from a base in Fallujah in June 2004. Days later, he appeared blindfolded and with a sword poised above his head in a photo purportedly taken by insurgents. An extremist group claimed to be holding him captive.

Not long after that, Hassoun turned up unharmed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, saying he’d been kidnapped. But officials were suspicious, and he was brought back to Camp Lejeune while the military considered charging him with desertion and counts related to a pistol and Humvee he’s accused of taking.

Hassoun’s case occupies some of the same murky territory as that of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a soldier who left his post in Afghanistan and was held by the Taliban for five years. The Army is considering what, if any charges or punishment Bergdahl should face.

— AP