Marine’s condition ‘excellent’

LANDSTUHL, Germany — A Marine whose mysterious 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 in Germany 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 aboard a C-17 transport jet earlier Friday. He was immediately whisked to the nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where a U.S. Navy doctor, Cmdr. Peter Marco, examined him.

“I found him in excellent physical condition,” Marco told reporters at Landstuhl, though he said Hassoun lost about 20 pounds during his absence. “There are no physical bruises on his body.”

Lt. Col. Sally Harvey, a clinical psychologist who met Hassoun in Lebanon and traveled with him to Germany, said Hassoun had yet to tell doctors what happened to him but would likely start talking today.