Teen’s international adventure ends
BAGHDAD, Iraq – A 16-year-old from Florida who traveled to one of the world’s most dangerous places without telling his parents left Baghdad on Friday to begin his journey home, the U.S. Embassy said, drawing to a close an adventure that could have cost him his life.
The mother of Farris Hassan, the prep-school junior whom U.S. officials took custody of in Baghdad this week, said she was “grateful” he was headed back. Shatha Atiya said she already knew what her first words would be to her son.
” ‘Thank God you’re alive,’ then I’ll collapse for a few hours and then sit down and have a long discussion about his consequences,” she said in Fort Lauderdale.
Consul General Richard B. Hermann said Friday that Hassan “safely departed Baghdad.” He reiterated warnings by the State Department and embassy against traveling to Iraq. Forty American citizens have been kidnapped since the war started in March 2003, of whom 10 have been killed. About 15 remain missing.
Hassan spoke to the Associated Press early Friday, several hours before the embassy announcement, and he was still under the impression he would be following his personal travel itinerary, which had him leaving the country by himself on Sunday.
He wasn’t even aware the story of his perilous travels was published around the world.
“I don’t have any Internet access here in the Green Zone, so I have no idea what’s going on,” he said.
A military officer accompanying him said it was his task to get Hassan “safe and sound to the United States.” The embassy refused to release any further details about his travel. It wasn’t known when he would arrive home in Florida.
Hassan, who attends Pine Crest School, an academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, left the United States on Dec. 11 and traveled to Kuwait, where he thought he could take a taxi into Baghdad and witness the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections.
A strong history student, Hassan had recently studied immersion journalism – in which a writer lives the life of his subject – and wanted to understand better what Iraqis are living through.