With the questions surrounding the appearance and disappearance of 24-year-old Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, two things are certain: he is alive and well, and his fate is now in the hands of the U.S. military.
Hassoun could face criminal investigation for possible desertion. However, friends and experts say this politically charged situation is more than just about a young Marine. It's also about the fragile relationship Muslims have with the rest of America.
A military spokesman confirmed that Hassoun was taken Friday from the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, where he turned up after having been missing for more than two weeks. He later arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
Officials said Hassoun will be debriefed at a military hospital in Berlin and given medical and psychological evaluations. He is expected to stay three to four days in debriefing and evaluations before returning to the United States, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw said.
According to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Hassoun went to the embassy voluntarily and remained there until Department of Defense officials arranged his departure.
Over the past two weeks, various news agencies have listed Hassoun as "absent without leave" or on "unauthorized leave." However, Marine officials now use the term "deserted" to characterize Hassoun after he failed to show up for duty.
Marine spokesman Maj. Jason Johnson said shortly after Hassoun's disappearance, officials had enough reason to list him as "deserted."
Speaking from Camp Pendleton, Calif., Johnson said Hassoun was initially listed as "missing."
"There was enough information to lead officials to believe he had deserted," Johnson said. But when video of a blind-folded Hassoun, being threatened with beheading, surfaced on Al Jazeera on June 27, Johnson said Marine officials changed Hassoun's status from "deserted" to "captured."
Friday, the Defense Department announced that Hassoun's status has changed from "captured" to "returned to military control." His whereabouts between June 19 and July 8 are under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Even if Hassoun were to be charged with desertion, he would not face the death penalty, according to a former chief of military justice for the U.S. Air Force who now works as an assistant Utah attorney general.
The Uniform Code of Military Justice states that any member of the armed forces convicted of desertion in time of war faces "death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct."
But Michael Wims, assistant Utah attorney general and a retired colonel who served as chief of military justice in the U.S. Air Force, said that provision doesn't apply because the conflict in Iraq is not a war declared by Congress or by executive order of the president.
"This is not 'in time or war,' " Wims said. "In practicality, even if there was such an authorization, the last time anyone got executed for desertion was World War II, and that was only once."
Some 21,000 American military personnel deserted during World War II, including 49 who were sentenced to death. A firing squad executed Pvt. Eddie Slovik in 1945, making him the only U.S. soldier put to death for desertion since the Civil War.
The number of those who have deserted or gone AWOL in the Iraq war was not immediately available.
In May, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 28, was convicted of desertion after leaving his unit in Iraq in protest of an "oil-driven" war. A military jury gave him a year in jail and a bad conduct discharge, the maximum sentence.
Two other soldiers, Jeremy Hinzman, 25, and Brandon Hughey, 19, fled to Canada earlier this year to avoid being deployed in Iraq. Both say the war is illegal and unjustified. They are the first U.S. soldiers to apply for refugee status in Canada after refusing combat duty in Iraq.
Wims, who was part of the effort to revise the military code to include action taken by a president to declare war in addition to Congress, said even if the death penalty were on the table in Hassoun's case, it would not be applied.
"Nobody would seek it. Let's get real. What kind of message would that send? This guy was in the hands of the terrorists who were going to behead him and they didn't, so we will? It's ridiculous."
Wims, who made it clear he is basing his opinions on what he's heard in the media about Hassoun, said a more likely punishment would be a year or two of confinement at the most. Such a case could even be handled administratively, he said.
It appears that investigators are focusing on desertion as a possible charge, instead of absence without leave (AWOL.) Wims said desertion amounts to being AWOL with the intent not to return.
If a soldier leaves with that intent, the military still considers it desertion, even if that soldier decides to return at some point, Wims said. In Hassoun's case, the offense would have been committed if he had left his post with the intent never to return before his purported capture.
Hassoun family friend Iqbal Hossain said he believes, however, that military officials have suggested from the beginning that Hassoun was a deserter and have not given him the benefit of the doubt.
"On one hand we have the Marine Corps saying in press conferences that they did not want to make any comment," Hossain said. "But several days before that, senior officials hinted that he may have left under his own volition. That's so self-contradictory."
Hossain said people should let the investigation run its course. When asked if he felt that the military would be fair in the investigation, "I still have hope for America," he said. "I don't want to be cynical because if I would be that, I don't think I would want to live in this country."
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