Iraq Odyssey Ends For U.S. Teen

16-Year-Old From Fla. Headed Home After Dangerous Adventure

(CBS/AP) 
At some point Hassan realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation.

After his second night in Baghdad, he contacted the AP and said he had come to do research and humanitarian work. The AP called the U.S. Embassy, which sent U.S. soldiers to pick him up.

"A 16-year-old American high school student who doesn't speak any Arabic ... it's unbelievable that he is still ... that nothing happened to him," said AP reporter Patrick Quinn.

State Department officials notified his parents, and assured Atiya that her son was in Baghdad's U.S-protected Green Zone, where he would be safer than in the sector where he first contacted journalists.

"I was so anxious. Words cannot even express it," Atiya said Thursday.

Hassan does not speak Arabic and has no experience in war zones, but he wanted to find out what life was like there.

"He is very driven and he is very patriotic. He believes in democracy," his mother said.

Atiya said her son is studious, works on the school newspaper and is on the debate team. He is a member of a Republican Party club at school who spends his time reading, rather than socializing, his mother said.

"He thinks girls require too much time, and he has more important things to do. He loves history," Atiya said.

When school officials learned of Hassan's trip, they threatened to expel him, but Atiya and Hassan's father, Redha Hassan, a physician, persuaded officials to allow him to remain, Atiya said. It was not immediately clear why they wanted to expel him.

Michael Buckwald, a 17-year-old classmate, said Hassan immerses himself in subjects that he likes and was opinionated in class.

"He always struck me as a very intellectual person. He's very outspoken at the same time," Buckwald said.

Hassan is the youngest of Atiya's four children. The others are enrolled at universities.

Aside from the research he wanted to accomplish, he also wrote in an essay saying he wanted to volunteer in Iraq.

He said he wrote half the essay while in the United States, half in Kuwait, and e-mailed it to his teachers Dec. 15 while in the Kuwait City airport.

"There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction," he wrote.

Hassan told AP he understood how dangerous his trip was. He'd said that his plans on his return to Florida were to "kiss the ground and hug everyone."

His mother has plans for him, too.

"I guess a lot of restrictions are going to be imposed on him," she told The Early Show co-anchor Tracy Smith. "We're going to take his passport, we're going to limit his access to money."