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A Syrian dictator’s toppling raises new hopes for missing American journalist Austin Tice

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A Syrian dictator’s toppling raises new hopes for missing American journalist Austin Tice

Houston native Austin Tice went missing while reporting in Syria in 2012. The Syrian regime’s collapse has raised hopes that he will be returned.

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A few days after he celebrated his 31st birthday, American freelance journalist Austin Tice emailed his father in Houston to say he had completed his reporting on how the conflict in Syria was affecting ordinary people.

He was leaving the suburbs of Damascus for nearby Lebanon, Tice wrote.

Five weeks later a shaky, 43-second video emerged titled “Austin Tice is Alive.” In it, the former captain in the U.S. Marines who was using his summer break from law school at Georgetown University to cover Syria’s civil war because he believed there was a lack of reporting from the ground, is blindfolded and surrounded by armed men.

The video shows Tice being led away by his apparent captors on a rocky hillside. In broken Arabic he recites portions of a prayer before stopping, clearly in distress, and saying “oh Jesus, oh Jesus.”

Tice emailed his father on Aug. 13, 2012. The video clip was released the following month and then appeared on various social media platforms including a Facebook page run by supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Tice’s family, friends, colleagues and the U.S. government have not seen or heard from him since.

But the sudden collapse of Assad’s regime over the weekend has renewed hopes, if brought few immediate new clues, that one of the longest-held American hostages could soon be released, or failing that his fate determined.

From eye doctor to brutal dictator: The rise (and fall) of Syria’s Bashar Assad

“We are eagerly anticipating seeing Austin walk free. We are asking anyone who can do so to please assist Austin so he can safely return home to his family,” Tice’s parents Debra and Marc said in a statement Sunday.

Speaking from the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden said American officials believe Tice is still alive and that the U.S. government is committed to bringing him home once they can pinpoint his location.

“We think we can get him back,” Biden said while acknowledging that “we have no direct evidence” of his status.

Americans in Syria

Tice is one of two known Americans who went missing in Syria after the conflict that started there in 2011 after Assad’s sweeping and brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. Hundreds of thousands have died in the war.

Nearly half of Syria’s pre-conflict population of 23 million have been displaced. More than 5 million Syrians have fled outside the country, chiefly to Turkey, Lebanon and some European nations such as Germany, Austria and Sweden.

“Under his rule, we didn’t live like normal humans. Almost every family has someone who was murdered, tortured in Assad’s prisons, drowned seeking safety, or hasn’t seen their loved ones for years because they can’t go home,” said Mohamad Helani, a Syrian refugee who now lives in Austria. USA TODAY first met Helani in 2016 when he was 13 and fleeing Syria with his parents along the so-called European migrant crisis.

Reporter’s notebook: walking with Europe’s refugees and migrants

The other American is Majd Kamalmaz, a trauma psychologist from Virginia who vanished in Syria in 2017 while on a trip to visit a family member and to help treat refugees and other victims of one of this century’s deadliest civil wars.

Like Tice, Kamalmaz was detained at a Syrian government checkpoint. Kamalmaz’s death in a Syrian prison was only confirmed this year, according to the U.S. State Department and the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, a group that campaigns on behalf of the families of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained overseas.

Biden has previously accused Assad’s regime of detaining Tice, whose journalism work has been published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers, CBS and other media outlets. However, no government or group has claimed responsibility for his disappearance and officials in Assad’s orbit have long denied holding him.

‘Austin Tice is alive’

The Tice family have spent years advocating for their son’s release with three different U.S. administrations.

On Friday, before Assad’s toppling − he is now reported by Russian news agencies to be in Moscow, where he and his family were granted political asylum − Debra Tice spoke at the National Press Club in Washington.

“Today is a day full of emotions. The news that we’re hearing from the Middle East is the kind of thing that can unsettle a mom … but the best thing that we want to share with you is that we have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government,” she told reporters as news of Assad’s precarious situation was becoming clear. “Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that,” she said

She did not elaborate on who this “significant source” was. On Sunday, the FBI renewed its call, and the offer of a $1 million reward, for any information that leads to “Austin’s safe return.”

One organization that the Tice family may be placing some of its hopes in is the White Helmets, a Syrian civil defense group that on Monday said it was sending “specialized emergency teams” to Saydnaya prison, one of the Assad regime’s most feared and notorious prisons where tens of thousands were held in hidden underground cells.

Survivors of these prisons say torture was routine, often watched live on camera by Assad intelligence officials. Accounts have emerged of women giving birth to children in these prisons who’ve never been outside. Sednaya prison, which is near Damascus, was dubbed the “human slaughterhouse” by Amnesty International, a rights group, because it was designed to sicken, starve, humiliate, degrade and, ultimately, exterminate.

“The teams consist of search and rescue units, wall-breaching specialists, iron door-opening crews, trained dog units, and medical responders,” the White Helmets said in a statement on X, the social media platform.

“These teams are well trained and equipped to manage such complex operations.”

Tice’s father, Marc, said so is his son.

“Debby may contradict me on this but in my mind he talked faster, walked faster, was stronger, smarter … than any other child in the history of the world,” he said in a video made a decade ago about his son’s captivity.

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