Austin Tice’s family says captive journalist still alive as Syria’s war rekindles

WASHINGTON — The family of Austin Tice, a journalist who disappeared more than a decade ago in Syria, voiced cautious optimism that the sweeping rebel offensive will provide new leverage with the regime to secure his release. 

“Austin Tice is alive,” his mother, Debra Tice, said Friday, attributing this information to a “significant source” she said was vetted by the US government. Tice’s parents and siblings spoke at the National Press Club following a meeting with US national security advisor Jake Sullivan. 

The meeting came as fighters, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), advanced on Syria’s third-largest city of Homs as part of a stunning offensive that poses the most serious challenge to Assad’s autocratic rule in years. 

Tice traveled to Syria the summer before his final year at Georgetown Law to cover the country’s civil war as a freelance journalist for outlets that included McClatchy, CBS and the Washington Post. Tice disappeared on Aug. 14, 2012, three days after his 31st birthday, after his taxi was stopped at a checkpoint in a Damascus suburb. 

Little is publicly known about his whereabouts or well-being, aside from a 47-second clip that surfaced five weeks after his disappearance, which analysts believe might have been staged. 

Tice is among several Americans, most of them dual citizens, thought to have been imprisoned by the Syrian regime during the civil war. They include Majd Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist from Virginia, who is presumed to have died in regime captivity. 

A lack of formal diplomatic relations with Syria has complicated US government efforts to bring Tice home. The Trump administration did attempt various back channels with the regime, and in late 2020, White House official Kash Patel and Roger Carstens, the US special envoy for hostage affairs, traveled to Damascus for rare negotiations on the detained Americans. 

The pair met with Syria’s sanctioned-intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk, whose demands the Associated Press reported included a full US troop pullout from Syria, the removal of sanctions and renewed diplomatic ties. The Biden administration revived those discrete talks in 2023, using the Gulf state of Oman as an intermediary.