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BERLIN - A U.S. Marine who disappeared in Iraq and turned up in Lebanon nearly three weeks later said he was excited to be going home, but his return trip was unexpectedly delayed at the last minute, military officials said Wednesday. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun left the U.S. military hospital at Landstuhl on Wednesday and had been expected to be flown home the same day from Ramstein Air Base. Instead, his departure was postponed until Thursday, without explanation. But Ramstein spokeswoman Darlene Cowsert later said his departure was postponed and she had no explanation. "Missions change," she said. Earlier, Hassoun...

The United States has notified Japan that a US Army sergeant who allegedly defected to North Korea nearly 40 years ago was still wanted on charges of desertion, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday. Charles Robert Jenkins, 64, who left North Korea last week for a reunion with his Japanese wife in Indonesia has expressed a desire to move to Japan, a Japanese foreign ministry official said. "We have notified the government of Japan that Sergeant Jenkins has been charged with desertion," said Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico. "We consider the charges serious, and the best course of action is to...

An Iraqi insurgents group executed one of the Bulgarian hostages four days after the 24-hour deadline elapsed last Friday. According to Al-Jazeera reports, the insurgents killed Georgi Lazov. The militants threaten to also execute the other Bulgarian Ivaylo Kepov within 24 hours unless all female prisoners are released in Iraq. A video footage aired by Arabic Al-Jazeera channel at 11 p.m. on Tuesday showed three men dressed in black with their faces covered with masks. In front of them a man looking like Lazov was kneeling with a scarf hiding his face. The hostage wore the same bright orange garment...

BEIJING (AP) - A Muslim has been executed on charges of seeking independence for China's Muslim-majority northwestern region of Xinjiang and making explosives, a court official said Tuesday. Kuerban Tudaji, an ethnic Uighur, was sentenced to death June 30 and later executed, said Fu Rongqing, a spokesman for the Supreme People's Court in Xinjiang. Fu said he wasn't sure of the date the execution was carried out. Death sentences in China typically are carried out shortly after the last appeal fails. Most executions are by gunshot to the head or neck, while some courts use lethal injection. Fu said Kuerban...

A US marine who disappeared in Iraq, was filmed being threatened with a sword and was later reported to have been beheaded is in excellent physical condition without a mark on him, according to doctors treating him after he reappeared at the American embassy in Beirut. Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, who is of Lebanese origin and was missing for 19 days, had lost 20lb and appeared to be exhausted when he arrived at Ramstein air base in Germany for the start of what promises to be a long debriefing. He told a psychologist at the base that he had slept...

Contrast the statements concerning Marine Hassoun's reasons for enlistment in the U.S. Marines. Then: NY Daily News article, June 28, 2004 "Hassoun, 24, is a devout Muslim who joined his family in the suburbs of Salt Lake City shortly before 9/11. His neighbors in Utah said he was so affected by the terror attacks that he enlisted in the Marines." And now... Associated Press, July 11,2004 BEIRUT, Lebanon - Relatives of a U.S. Marine who surfaced in Beirut nearly three weeks after an apparent kidnapping in Iraq appealed for understanding from fellow Arabs on Saturday, saying the Lebanese-born man emigrated...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Relatives of a U.S. Marine who surfaced in Beirut nearly three weeks after an apparent kidnapping in Iraq appealed for understanding from fellow Arabs on Saturday, saying the Lebanese-born man emigrated and joined the Marines for financial reasons. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was doing well and recovering at a U.S. military hospital in Germany after being flown out of Lebanon on Friday, a Marine spokesman said. He is expected to return to his home unit in Camp Lejeune, N.C., next week. In Hassoun's native city of Tripoli, his family issued a statement saying he was forced...

OCEANSIDE – "You want to dance?" 18-year-old Nichole Merzi asked the Marine shuffling his feet alone in a corner of the club Margarita Rocks. Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun accepted and by the end of the night he was smitten by the friendly girl who wore a T-shirt with a heart and the word "Lebanon," her father's country. "I'm from Lebanon," Hassoun said, and so began a courtship that involved Merzi and her Oceanside family. Nineteen days ago, the Camp Pendleton Marine went missing from his unit in Iraq, and it was feared he had been beheaded by Iraqi insurgents. Yesterday,...

July 10, 2004 -- WASHINGTON — Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is believed to have made phone calls during the period he went missing in Iraq — raising serious doubts among investigators about whether he was kidnapped by terrorists, military officials said yesterday. In the latest twist to an increasingly bizarre story, U.S. intelligence agencies, which have extensive listening posts in Iraq, picked up a handful of cellphone conversations involving a man investigators believe was Hassoun. The calls were made before and shortly after he went missing, military officials familiar with the investigation said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has put on hold the execution of a San Antonio man while the justices decide whether to consider issues he raised on appeal. Troy Kunkle had been scheduled to die tonight for the 1984 slaying of a Corpus Christi father of two young daughters. After he killed Stephen Horton, trial testimony showed, Kunkle recited from "No Remorse," a Metallica song: "Another day, another death, another sorrow, another breath." Kunkle has appealed on grounds that he does not deserve the death penalty. It was not immediately clear which issue or issues the high court will consider. The...

American Marine Cpl. Wassef Hassoun, held hostage in Iraq, has been freed, his brother tells CNN.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - A Lebanese-born U.S. marine is alive and free after having been thought to have been decapitated by his captors in Iraq, the hostage's brother said on Tuesday. Wassef Ali Hassoun's brother Sami, speaking from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, said his family had received word Hassoun was alive and had been released in the early hours of Tuesday, but declined to specify the source of the information. "We got solid assurances that my brother is alive and was released today," he told reporters. There has been confusion in the last several days about Hassoun's fate,...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi Islamist group said it had moved an abducted U.S. marine to "safety" on Monday after he pledged to leave the military, raising hopes for the fate of a man who had previously been reported as beheaded. Dubai-based Al Jazeera television said the announcement came in a statement from the Islamic Response Movement, the same group it reported on June 27 as claiming to have abducted Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun and threatening to kill him. Hassoun's relatives in Lebanon said the same statement had been faxed to them. Battling militants blamed for kidnappings and bombings, the...

QABATIYA, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian militants publicly executed an accused collaborator with Israel with machineguns in a West Bank town square on Friday after a throng of Palestinian onlookers called for him to die. Wild celebrations broke out among the hundreds of spectators after four gunmen from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, part of President Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, shot father-of-two Muhammad Rafiq Daraghmeh, 45, in Qabatiya. Militants had hustled Daraghmeh into the square before assembled townsfolk and told them: "This man, as you know ... gave information to Israel on the whereabouts of our fighters. What should his sentence...

KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait's information minister slammed Saddam Hussein for defending Iraq's 1990 invasion of the neighboring Gulf country during his Thursday court appearance in Baghdad and said the former Iraqi leader should be executed. "The criminal still believes he is the president of Iraq," Mohammed Abul-Hassan told The Associated Press in Kuwait after watching the televised images of Saddam appearing in an Iraqi court. "Just imagine if he was still ruling Iraq." Saddam is facing seven broad charges, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which was occupied by Iraqi forces for seven months until being liberated by a U.S.-led...

AP David Ray Harris was executed today for the murder of Mark Mays in a shootout outside Mays' Beaumont apartment. Harris, in an unrelated case, had given testimony that sent an innocent man to death row before the 1988 documentary The Thin Blue Line cast doubt on the evidence. HUNTSVILLE -- A man whose false testimony sent an innocent man to death row before the 1988 documentary "The Thin Blue Line" cast doubt on the evidence was executed today for an unrelated murder. "Sir, in honor of a true American hero: Let's roll," David Ray Harris said when asked...

Britain thinks Saddam will be executed By Paul Waugh, Evening Standard Deputy Political Editor 30 June 2004 Britain accepts that Saddam Hussein is likely to be executed by the Iraqi government for war crimes, senior Government sources have revealed. Look here too! • Iraq battles for online independence The former dictator is facing what one senior Iraqi called "the trial of the century" after he was transferred from American to Baghdad legal custody today. He will remain in the physical custody of US forces. He is due to appear in court tomorrow along with 11 of his henchmen including former...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Debate raged on Islamic Web sites about the propriety of killing fellow Muslims who work for coalition forces in Iraq (news - web sites), after militants released three Turkish hostages they had threatened to behead. The Tawhid and Jihad movement of terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi announced Saturday it would kill the three Turks (news - web sites) within 72 hours unless Turkish companies stopped doing business with American forces in Iraq. On Tuesday, however, the movement released them "for the sake of Muslim brothers and mujahedeen in Turkey," according to a statement broadcast on Al-Jazeera television....

We're all now suppossed to be scared. Those Al Quaida guys must be tough. They're so tough they just executed a U.S. POW. This impresses me to no end. The execution of Keith M. Maupin has to constitute about the most stupid thing Al Quaida could have done. The one moral advantage these thugs still had was that in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib Prison, they could claim the Americans were barbarians for how they treated prisoners. Well, that argument is gone. There could be no more cowardly or pathetic an act than executing a person who has surrendered himself...

Report: Iraqi Militants Kill U.S. Soldier 57 minutes ago By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi militants killed an American soldier they have held hostage for nearly three months, saying the killing was because the U.S. government did not change its policy in Iraq (news - web sites), Al-Jazeera television said Tuesday. The report of the killing of Spc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, came hours after the United States returned sovereignty in Iraq to an interim government. The report did not say when Maupin was killed. The U.S. military said it could not...