US Schoolboy to Reveal Details of Trip to Iraq

The Florida teenager who traveled to Iraq to help research a school project was expected yesterday to share further details about his bizarre and dangerous solo journey.

Farris Hassan, 16, who spent two days in Baghdad accompanied by nothing more than an Arabic phrasebook, returned home on Sunday night to find a throng of reporters and camera crews outside his family’s apartment in Fort Lauderdale. "I’m still pretty tired and need some rest, but I am preparing a statement at this time," the teenager told reporters.

He took his passport and $1,800 (£1,238) in cash he had earned trading on the stock market when he left Florida for the Middle East on December 11. He did not tell his family what he was doing until he arrived in Kuwait, but it emerged at the weekend that his Iraqi-born father helped him secure a visa for Iraq. "I felt it would leave a scar, disappointing him in his young life," the father, Redha Hassan, told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, explaining why he did not order his son home immediately. "I learned long ago that if you say no, they stick to the point and insist on doing it. Nothing fazed him."

Farris thought he would be able to take a taxi from Kuwait into Baghdad for the December 15 parliamentary elections, but the border was closed for voting. He stayed with family friends in Lebanon before flying to Baghdad on Christmas Day.

In Iraq, he stayed at a hotel with other Americans, drawing a crowd at a Baghdad food stall after using his phrase book to order a meal. He contacted the Associated Press bureau in Baghdad, telling surprised reporters he was studying journalism and wanted to understand better what Iraqis are going through. "I thought I’d go the extra mile for that, or rather, a few thousand miles," he said.

Farris, who works on the school newspaper and is a member of the Republican party club, said a trip to the Middle East was a healthy vacation compared with a skiing trip to Colorado. "You go to, like, the worst place in the world and things are terrible," he told AP. "When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the blessings you have there, and I’m just going to be, like, ecstatic for life."