BEIRUT, July 9: The mystery of a US marine, who went missing in Iraq only to resurface in Lebanon 19 days later, deepened Friday after Washington announced official investigations into a case it said had been misrepresented.

"Almost nothing that has been reported about (marine) Corporal (Wassef Ali) Hassoun has been accurate," Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita announced in Washington, declining to go into further details.

The US military in Iraq announced an investigation into the case of Hassoun, who was at one point feared beheaded after footage of armed captors holding a marine was released to an Arabic satellite channel.

"The circumstances regarding his whereabouts between 19 June and 8 July are under investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service," a statement said. Hassoun left Lebanon for Germany, accompanied by minders on board a US Army C-130 aircraft Friday afternoon, said an official at Beirut's international airport.

"We visited him in the embassy in Awkar on Thursday evening and said our goodbyes as he was due to leave Lebanon early this morning," his brother Sami told AFP earlier.

He declined to elaborate on what he knew about the circumstances of his brother's resurfacing. "Our only interest is that he is safe and sound. We were very happy to see him even for just 10 minutes.

"He seemed a bit tired and tense and we tried to calm him down, restore his spirits and ease the stress of the difficult position he finds himself in." Lebanese media reported Hassoun was being flown to a US base in Germany after preliminary questioning at the US mission but embassy officials declined to comment on his whereabouts.

Based with the marines outside the insurgent bastion of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, the Lebanese-born Muslim had worked as an Arabic interpreter until he went missing on June 19.

Initially posted as a deserter, Hassoun's status was changed to captured after the video footage was broadcast a week later by Al-Jazeera showing a marine being held by masked gunmen.

Wassef, who emigrated to the United States in 1999 to continue his studies, enlisted nearly two years ago. Relatives said his older brother, Mohammed, moved to California more than a decade ago and was later joined by his parents and then some of his brothers.

Wassef's sister-in-law, Lina, told the Lebanese weekly Magazine that he had always dreamed of joining the US Marines. "Just like some children dream of becoming fire fighters, Wassef always wanted to fight with honour, brought up as he was in the warrior culture of Lebanon," she said.

Also a mystery is why Wassef was deployed to a frontline position like Fallujah when his family hail from the Denniyeh region of north Lebanon, itself a bastion of militancy. -AFP