Marine, in Germany, Has Not Shed Light on Disappearance

A Marine whose disappearance in Iraq was followed by claims he had been kidnapped and beheaded is exhausted but in “excellent” physical condition, and has yet to tell his story, doctors at a U.S. military hospital said Friday.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, who turned up Thursday at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut nearly three weeks after he vanished, was flown from the Lebanese capital to Ramstein Air Base in Germany aboard a C-17 transport plane Friday. He was whisked to the nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where U.S. Navy doctor Cmdr. Peter Marco examined him.

“I found him in excellent physical condition,” Marco told reporters. “There are no physical bruises on his body.” He said Hassoun had lost about 20 pounds.

Lt. Col. Sally Harvey, a clinical psychologist who met Hassoun in Lebanon and traveled with him to Germany, said the Marine had not told doctors what had happened to him, but would likely start talking today.

Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Muslim, was working in Iraq as an interpreter. He is expected to stay at Landstuhl for a few days before traveling to Camp Lejeune, N.C., said Maj. Tim Keefe, a spokesman for the Marine Corps in Germany.

While Hassoun was missing, conflicting reports emerged about his fate: first that he was absent without leave, then that he had been kidnapped, then that he had been beheaded, then that he was alive. On June 27, a week after Hassoun disappeared, Arab television broadcast a videotape purportedly from Islamic militants showing him blindfolded with a sword held over his head.

In Iraq on Friday, two mortar shells apparently targeting a Baghdad hotel housing foreigners instead hit a nearby house and street, killing a child and wounding three other people. The blasts, which shook the center of the capital, were aimed at the Al Sadeer Hotel, police said.

The governments of Bulgaria and the Philippines stood fast Friday in the face of insurgents’ threats to kill their citizens who had been taken hostage, refusing to pull out troops or to pressure the U.S. to free Iraqi detainees.