Hassouns lose chance for $1 million

The brother of a Utah Marine twice accused of desertion said he and his brother were in the middle of negotiating a $1 million book deal and movie rights up until Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun disappeared over the holidays.

Mohamad Hassoun told the Deseret Morning News that his brother's second disappearance in the face of pending desertion and theft charges has soured any interest in selling the missing Marine's personal story.

"There are no current negotiations right now," Mohamad Hassoun said Thursday from his home in West Jordan.

Facing charges stemming from his disappearance from a Marine camp in Iraq last summer, Hassoun was allowed holiday leave from Camp LeJeune, N.C., to visit his family in Utah. Family members confirmed that Hassoun arrived in Utah and visited over Christmas and had assumed he was on his way back to Camp LeJeune when he called them on Dec. 19, saying he was in Washington, D.C.

However, news sources have quoted Pentagon officials who said they traced Hassoun's credit card transactions, showing he booked travel to Canada and then on to Lebanon. Marines officially listed Hassoun a deserter for a second time on Jan. 5, saying he failed to report for duty on Jan. 4. There is currently a nationwide warrant for his arrest.

The 24-year-old Marine was scheduled to appear at a military pre-trial court hearing at Camp LeJeune last week, after which it would be decided if he would face court-martial. If convicted, Hassoun faced a maximum penalty of life incarceration.

Since his second disappearance, Mohamad Hassoun said neither his family in Utah nor family members in the family's home town of Tripoli, Lebanon, have heard from Hassoun.

"We are worried for his safety. We pray, that's all we can do for him," Mohamad Hassoun said.

Mohamad Hassoun began negotiating with the Los Angeles public relations firm Sands Digital Media in August, just weeks after the Marine was returned to the United States, said the firm's owner, Michael Sands.

No contract was ever signed, and negotiations have broken off.

"Everything is off the table after what happened to my brother," Mohamad Hassoun said. "He would have to tell his story, and I don't know his story."

Sands also said a $1 million fee is unlikely, mainly because whatever sympathy factor there may have been for Wassef Hassoun is gone with the second desertion.

"I asked him what he wanted, and he said a million dollars," Sands said. "A million dollars? This is not Jessica Lynch."

Lynch, an Army supply clerk, was rescued in a commando raid 20 days after her convoy took a wrong turn and was ambushed in Nasiriyah, Iraq, in March 2003. Nine soldiers from Lynch's unit and two others traveling with them were killed.