Washington D.C. – NY Post, Nov. 01, 2025
US journalist Austin Tice’s family is furious over a CNN report strongly suggesting her son — who was taken captive in Syria by the Assad regime 13 years ago — is dead.
The CNN documentary and accompanying article by Clarissa Ward, aired and published Tuesday, relied on the testimony of Bassam Al-Hassan, the ex-right-hand man to ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Hassan, who has been charged with war crimes, claimed he was ordered by Assad to execute Tice in 2013 and that the order was carried out by a subordinate.
“Of course, Austin is dead. Austin is dead,” Hassan told CNN.
However, Hassan was previously interrogated by the FBI over these claims and failed a polygraph test, a detail that the family feels CNN buried.
“CNN ran this article without regard for Austin and the torment that this has rained on our family,” Tice’s mother, Debra, told The Post.
Tice, an ex-Marine, covered the Syrian civil war in its early days as a freelance journalist in 2012. His bylines appeared in the Washington Post, McClatchy and CBS News.
He embedded himself with rebels on the front line. He was kidnapped by the Assad regime on Aug. 13, 2012, while reporting in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus.
