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U.S. Embassy in Liberia Searches for Missing American

By TIM WEINER

MONROVIA, Liberia, Sept. 1 — An intense search behind rebel lines is under way for an American believed to have been kidnapped and held hostage by Liberian dissidents.

Officials from the United States Embassy here are trying to find Nabil Hage, an American citizen and a prominent member of the tight-knit population of Lebanese who do business here.

He served the embassy as a warden, part of a network of 15 volunteer neighborhood-watch officers. Mr. Hage has an extended family in Virginia. His father was killed here 13 years ago, caught in the crossfire between government and rebel forces.

No one here knows if Mr. Hage is dead or alive. Members of the Lebanese population here say that he was taken hostage and remains a captive, and that the rebels have sent ransom demands.

The search for Mr. Hage has taken American officials more than 20 miles behind the lines held by the rebel forces of the group called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD. This is a rare, risky effort by the intensely security-conscious and understaffed embassy, which has been evacuated under fire three times since 1990. There are no indications that the small contingent of United States marines stationed here is to become directly involved in the search.

On Aug. 5, a reporter for The New York Times saw a commander from the rebel group who calls himself Gen. Dragon Master wearing a United States Army uniform with the name tag "Hage" (pronounced Haj). Mr. Hage is a United States Army veteran. Efforts to reach the commander, whose real name is Sekou Kamara, were unavailing today; his cellphone was turned off.

Mr. Hage, who is in his late 30's, was last heard from nearly five weeks ago. He was at work on Bushrod Island, a bustling business district of Monrovia, when the area was overrun by the rebel group. He ran the Liberian branch of Westbrandt, a German machinery company, and had an apartment above its store.

Mr. Hage was trapped in the intense fire between the rebels and government militias as the battle for Monrovia raged throughout late July and into early August. He hid for five days, and for each of those days was in contact by radio telephone with the United States Embassy and his fellow wardens.

During the fighting in July, American-made M-81 mortars fired by the rebels fell on the embassy's grounds. The source of those missiles is now under investigation; they may have come from the armed forces of neighboring Guinea, which trained some of the rebels.

Sister Barbara Brilliant, a nun long active in Liberia and, like Mr. Hage, an embassy warden, said she spoke to Mr. Hage daily during the siege of Bushrod Island.

"LURD entered his workplace and looted it while he hid above the store," Sister Barbara said. "He said, `I think I'm going to try to escape and swim across,' " from the island toward the embassy. The last time he called, he was hiding next door with a friend, who later reported that Mr. Hage had fled on foot.

On the sixth day, the line went dead. When the fighting died down in early August, friends and United States officials looked for Mr. Hage, to no avail.

Sister Barbara, dean of the Mother Patern College of Health Sciences at St. Teresa's Convent in Monrovia, said the most reliable reports from witnesses described Mr. Hage as being taken in early August to a brewery north of Monrovia that had been seized by the rebels as a staging base.

The rebels have withdrawn from the area, pushed north by Nigerian peacekeepers, but they still control large stretches of Liberia outside the capital. The search for Mr. Hage has centered on the rebel-controlled town of Tubmanburg and the surrounding Bomi Hills area, both 40 miles north of Monrovia, and the Bong Mines region, about 50 miles northeast of the capital.

Thousands of people died in June, July and early August during the battle for Monrovia. There is some resentment among Liberians who are aware of the search for Mr. Hage that the United States, which did not intervene during the fighting, has mounted a special effort to find him. Lebanese business people here control a considerable amount of wealth, and that wealth creates some bitterness.

But Sister Barbara has pressed the embassy and the International Committee of the Red Cross to help locate Mr. Hage, dead or alive.

"Let's pray he's alive," she said today. "Let's find him."

As of 2007, Hage is still missing and presumed dead.