A U.S. Marine who disappeared in Iraq and turned up in Lebanon three weeks later arrived at a Marine Corps base south of Washington, D.C., on Thursday after six days of evaluation in a U.S. military hospital in Germany, a military official said. Lt. Col. David Lapan, a Marine Corps spokesman, said Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun would continue to undergo a "repatriation" process until it is determined he is fit and capable of returning to normal duty. He said the process could take from weeks to months. Hassoun was not made available at Quantico for questions from reporters. He left Ramstein Air Base in Germany on a morning flight aboard an Air Force C-5 Galaxy heavy transport plane and stopped first at Dover Air Force Base, Del., where he boarded an Air Force C-12 jet for the flight to Quantico.
A spokesman at Quantico, Marine Corps Capt. Jeff Landis, said Hassoun arrived at 3 p.m. EDT, and was received by a military support team that came from Hassoun’s home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Quantico is home to the Marines’ Officer Candidate School and is a focal point for the service’s leadership training and development of new warfighting concepts and technologies. The Navy has said it is investigating whether the kidnapping might have been a hoax, but the Naval Criminal Investigation Service is not expected to question Hassoun until his repatriation procedure is completed, the Marine Corps said. |