BEIRUT, Lebanon - A U.S. Marine who vanished in a reported kidnapping in Iraq and resurfaced in Beirut more than two weeks later left for a U.S. military base in Germany today, Lebanese officials said.

Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was to be flown to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and would stay for several days, hospital spokeswoman Marie Shaw said. "He's going to undergo debriefing and evaluation," she said.

The Navy was investigating whether the abduction of Hassoun - who at one point was reported to be beheaded by his captors - could have been a hoax.

The 24-year-old Lebanese-American had disappeared from his base near the restive Iraqi city of Fallujah. On Thursday, he arranged for American officials to pick him up in Beirut and take him to the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.

Sami Hassoun, Wassef's older brother, said that the family met the Marine at the U.S. Embassy in northern Beirut.

"We went there last night and saw him. We said goodbye to him and came back home. They (embassy officials) told us he will leave Lebanon today," Sami Hassoun said.

Confusion has surrounded Hassoun's fate since a videotape broadcast on Arab television June 27 showed him with his eyes covered by a white blindfold and a sword raised over his head.

His capture was claimed by a group calling itself "Islamic Response," and came during the tense days before the U.S. transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government June 28, a period of increased abductions and killings of foreigners and attacks on U.S. forces.

A statement on an Islamic militant Web site on July 3 claimed that Hassoun had been beheaded, following similar slayings of an American businessman and a South Korean translator in Iraq and an American contractor in Saudi Arabia. The next day, a statement on another Islamic Web site denied he had been killed.

There also has been speculation he might have deserted his base and was headed to Lebanon when he was abducted. The Navy was investigating whether the entire kidnapping might have been a hoax.