Washington D.C. – Politico, December 13, 2024
Twelve years after journalist AUSTIN TICE was kidnapped in Syria, the U.S. government believes the fall of Syrian leader BASHAR AL-ASSAD presents the best window in years to locate the missing freelancer.
It’s unclear whether Tice is still alive, as there have been no sightings of him in over a decade. Yet the Tice family and U.S. government officials have said over the last week they have reason to believe he is alive, that he was being held by Assad forces and can be recovered from Syria.
That said, the Tice family and advocates close to them say that bureaucratic hurdles remain within the U.S. government — hurdles that may have hindered prior efforts to secure his release.
Unlike other formerly jailed journalists like Wall Street Journal reporter EVAN GERSHKOVICHor The Washington Post’s JASON REZAIAN, Tice has not been declared “wrongfully detained” because the Syrian government under Assad never publicly confirmed or denied he was in its custody.
MARC TICE, Tice’s father, told NatSec Daily in an interview that successive administrations let Tice’s legal status serve as a justification for not taking more action.
“I see that as more of an excuse than a reality that’s letting bureaucracy get in the way of work that could be done,” Tice said. “This bureaucratic hurdle has kept them from actively engaging to bring Austin home.”
As it stands, Tice’s case is the responsibility of the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, an FBI-led interagency unit created under the Obama administration. It also gets some resources from the State Department’s office of the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, which was also created under President BARACK OBAMA.
But Tice’s father said that these offices are now bogged down in that bureaucratic process, even though they were created precisely to eliminate jams and allocate adequate resources.
“It worked for a while,” he said. “But it has devolved, in our assessment, back into the silos that prevent good information from being shared from one organization to another so that action can be taken.”
