Hassan, 16, was headed back to the United States Friday following his foray to his parents' native country, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported.

Hassan's father, Dr. Redha Hassan, said he had been planning to take his son to Iraq during the summer, but the youth didn't want to wait. He used his own money to buy a plane ticket to Kuwait and headed over two weeks ago, leaving behind only an e-mail message saying, "Don't worry about me, I will be safe."

"I said to myself, 'You have no idea what you're getting yourself into.' For $100, they kidnap people," Redha Hassan told the newspaper. "The suicide bombers, they look for foreigners. He's young, with an American passport and doesn't speak a word of Arabic."

Hassan's mother told "CBS Morning News" she would be confiscating her son's passport.