Last December we noted the story of Hossam Mousa, a Massachusetts pizza shop owner whose Egyptian wife alleged that he held her captive and beat her.

On Thursday, all charges against Mr. Mousa were dropped after key elements of the wife’s testimony failed to check out: Husband cleared in rape case: Wife will head back to Egypt as charges dropped.

Last month, the wife’s restraining order against Mousa was lifted after she denied statements recorded in the police report, blaming it on bad Arabic translation.

Yesterday, a somber Mousa told a reporter he wants to put his life back together.

“My reputation,” he said, shaking his head, “I hope to get it back. I thank my lawyer for standing by my side the whole time, my family and all my friends, the patrons of Goody’s.”

Mousa has owned Goody’s Pizza in Framingham for the last 10 years, and said he received letters of support from his customers since his arrest made headlines in newspapers and on television.

He moved to the United States almost 20 years ago and is an American citizen. According to his attorney, Mousa has no criminal record.

A couple of years ago, the couple met while vacationing in their native homeland, Egypt. She worked as a TV reporter in Saudi Arabia. It was not an arranged marriage, Mousa said, but a typical courtship.

He returned to Egypt last summer for their wedding. She moved to Natick in September. They started to experience marital difficulties, but nothing, Mousa said, to the extent of her court accusations.

Neither Mousa nor his lawyer could pinpoint how the struggling marriage ended up characterized as an abusive relationship. Among the things she told police was that he terrorized her by locking her in rooms for days at a time and raping her three times. …

The case against Mousa began to unravel on Dec. 11 when his wife was unexpectedly asked to testify at the Middlesex Probate and Family Court in Cambridge to extend her restraining order against him.

At the time, the woman testified, “I didn’t know I was going to be asked all these questions.”

FitzGerald asked her when she was locked up in a room at her in-laws’ Ashland home for five days. When she gave the dates, he presented a Gold’s Gym record that documented she was at the Natick gym on those days.

“