The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for more than a decade, said Friday she is confident her son is alive, citing information from “key sources” that she did not identify. said. It is vetted by the U.S. government and treated as trustworthy.
“He’s being cared for and he’s doing well, we know that,” Debra Tice said.
Tice’s mother and other relatives spoke at an event Friday following a White House meeting with national security officials that unfolded amid the chaos in Syria. -Assad’s forces as rebel fighters, who have already captured Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, march towards President Bashar al-Assad.
“The news coming out of the Middle East makes my mother feel anxious,” Debra Tice said, before adding, “When I think about war, I never have a happy moment.”
Also on Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Syria issued a notice in the capital Damascus urging Americans in the country to “depart now while commercial options remain.”
Austin Tice’s sister, Naomi, said she asked authorities if there was a way to use the unrest to secure Austin’s freedom. “I just got hurt,” she replied. Get past the frustration. ”
Tice’s father, Mark, echoed that sentiment, noting that this week’s meetings with White House and State Department officials turned into an accusatory affair.
“We’ve seen what real commitment looks like. We’ve seen it in Russia. We’ve seen it in China, we’ve seen it in Venezuela, we’ve seen it in Gaza. ,” he said, referring to locations where hostages have been released in recent months. “And we haven’t seen it yet.”
He also declined to discuss information indicating whether his son was alive, but said: Earlier this year, Austin was shown to be alive and being cared for. And we want to make this information as public as possible. ”
Tice, a Houston native whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, McClatchy and other outlets, disappeared at a checkpoint in a disputed region west of Damascus in August 2012.
A video released weeks later showed him blindfolded and held down by armed men, saying, “Oh, Jesus.” Since then, we have not heard from each other. In 2022, Joe Biden said the US knew with “certainty” that Syrian authorities were holding Taïs, a claim the Assad regime quickly denied.
In the final months of the former Trump administration, two U.S. officials, Roger Carstens, the government’s top hostage negotiator, and Kash Patel, now President Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, were involved in the investigation of Tice and others. secretly visited Damascus in search of information about the Americans. He was missing in Syria.
It was the highest level of talks between the United States and the Assad regime in years, but Syrian officials did not provide any meaningful information about Tais.
