UK – The Guardian, January 23, 2025
The reporter’s mother, Debra Tice, has not entered Syria to search for her son for nearly 10 years, but associations like Hostage Aid Worldwide have helped create renewed hope.
Debra Tice had managed to gather her family in one place in early December – no easy feat given they were spread across the US and Australia. When they planned their reunion months before, the Tice family had no idea they would be together to watch the Assad regime fall after a lightning 11-day rebel offensive toppled the 53-year rule.
“It was amazing for us to be together like that – it doesn’t happen often – to watch that together,” Debra said from a hotel room in Damascus. Only one member of her family was missing from the reunion, her son Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped at the age of 31 in a suburb outside Damascus in 2012, while reporting on the Syrian civil war.
On Saturday, Debra returned to Damascus after nearly 10 years. Though initially cooperative, the Assad regime stopped issuing her visas in 2015 as she searched for her son, who was believed to have been held by the government itself. Austin would now be 43 years old, after 12 years of captivity.
The last footage of Tice was posted in 2012, showing the reporter blindfolded, led by men who forced him to recite Islamic prayer before he said, in apparent distress, “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. God.”
There are doubts about whether the video was staged to make it look as if Tice was kidnapped by Islamist rebels, rather than the government. Experts said the men in the video were wearing clothes native to Afghanistan, rather than Syria.
With the Assad regime gone, the search for Tice can resume. Nizar Zakka, the head of Hostage Aid Worldwide (HAW) and a former hostage in Iran, entered Syria a few days after the fall of the regime and began to search for the journalist.
“You should see the way we enter these security branches, we invade them,” Zakka said. He brought with him a team of 12 cargo pants clad staff members, whom he directs with military-like orders.
Together, they have spent the last six weeks combing through former branches of state security, military intelligence and even the home of the former head of the Syrian air force intelligence unit, Jamil Hassan. Wherever they think a VIP hostage like Tice might have been held, they are looking for documents, hard drives, anything with his name on it.
“As a former hostage myself, I know where to look, where people might write information on the prison walls, where they keep the high-value hostages,” Zakka said.
So far, the team has not found any documents that pertain to Austin Tice. Their running theory is that the reporter is being held in a Syrian safe house by a high-level regime figure who wants to use Tice as a bargaining chip for their own safe passage outside Syria. Zakka said they had a few leads on where these safe houses may be, but have “nothing concrete”.
For months, the HAW had run ads on TV and radio inside Syria, urging people to contact them if they had any information on Tice’s whereabouts. Since his detention, no party has produced a proof of life.
HAW say they believe Tice is alive and well based off various reports they received, including what they say are documents from medical treatments he received during his 12 years of captivity. Former US president Joseph Biden also said he believed Tice was alive.
With new leadership in Washington and Damascus, the Tice family believe that there is renewed hope to find their son.
“Today is going to be a new day for us, things are going to change … it’s like starting over again, it’s a new beginning after 8 December,” Debra Tice said at a press conference on Monday in Damascus.
