Washington — The family of Austin Tice, the freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria more than 12 years ago, said they have been told that he is alive and well, and they’re frustrated with the U.S. government’s inability to bring him home.
“We have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government, Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well. And there is no doubt about that,” Debra Tice, his mother, said at a news conference on Friday at the National Press Club.
She said her son “is being cared for and he is well.”
Tice, a Marine veteran and journalist who worked with several news organizations including CBS News, the Washington Post and McClatchy, disappeared on Aug. 14, 2012, while he was reporting on the Syrian civil war. A short video that appeared weeks later on YouTube and Facebook showed a distressed Tice blindfolded with his apparent captors. It was the last time he was seen.
No one has ever claimed responsibility for his disappearance, but President Biden has said the U.S. knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime.”
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The family said the U.S. government is preventing the release of information about the source of Austin Tice’s well-being. But asked whether her son is being held by the Syrian government, Debra Tice said, “We’ve always known that.”
Marc Tice, his father, said the new information “is very different” from past leads.
“We are confident that this information is fresh. It indicates as late as earlier this year that Austin is alive and being cared for,” he said.
Debra Tice added that the information is credible because “almost every entity in the United States government regarding security has verified it.”
The missing journalist’s parents and siblings traveled to Washington for meetings with government officials this week as a Syrian rebel offensive challenges Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The family said the meeting has been in the works since July and was not prompted by the situation in Syria.
They met with the National Security Council, including Mr. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, on Friday before their news conference. They met with the State Department on Thursday.
The family said they asked whether the offensive in Syria could be leveraged in the journalist’s favor and implored Sullivan for a commitment that Mr. Biden would reach out directly to Assad. But the family did not receive any assurances, they said.
“There just seems to be a massive disconnect between what President Biden has dictated for Austin in terms of doing everything that we can to bring him home, and then the actions and the behavior of the people that sit just below him,” his brother Simon Tice said.
Debra Tice expressed optimism about the impact President-elect Donald Trump could have on the case when he takes office in January. She said Trump, during his first term, “had an obsession” with her son and getting him home, but members of his administration put up roadblocks.
“Mike Pompeo and John Bolton did all they could to keep that from happening,” she said of Trump’s CIA director-turned-secretary of state and national security adviser.
