Efforts to locate Austin Tice, the US journalist who was abducted while covering the civil war in Syria over 12 years ago, have gained new urgency following the sudden fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in the country.
US officials have pinned down a number of prisons in Syria that could hold information which they believe could lead them to Tice, according to The New York Times, as the rebel forces who overthrew Assad’s regime have begun to empty the country’s political prisons.
President Joe Biden over the weekend appeared cautiously optimistic that Tice will be brought home.
“We believe he’s alive,” Biden said. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet.”
However, US military officials noted there were currently no plans for a hostage rescue mission, according to the Times.
Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the State Department, on Tuesday said the US.government has “no higher priority than the safe return of Austin Tice to his family,” but added he had no further details to share about the status of search efforts.
John Kirby, the White House national security communications adviser, echoed Miller, saying that while this moment “could present an opportunity for us to glean more information about [Tice], his whereabouts, his condition,” there are still many unknowns.
“I would just tell you that our going assumption is that he’s still alive; that we have no indication, no information to the contrary,” Kirby said of Tice.
Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, has traveled to Beirut to seek information on Tice’s location, the State Department said earlier this week. (Lebanon has long mediated talks over the fate of Tice.)
HuffPost has reached out to the State Department for comment on the status of the search efforts for Tice.
Meanwhile, Tice’s parents have said they have what they described as credible information indicating that their son is being “treated well.”
“We have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government that Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that,” his mom, Debra, said at the National Press Club Friday.
But Debra Tice also expressed frustration with the government’s approach in the case, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett “there isn’t an urgency about finding him and making sure that he’s OK.”
The U.S. has long maintained the American journalist was being held in Syria despite the Assad regime’s denials.
The collapse of that regime, though, following a surprise offensive that prompted the former Syrian president and his family to flee to Moscow, seems to have reignited hope within the U.S. that Tice can be found.
The head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a US nonprofit, was also due to arrive in Damascus on Wednesday as part of an effort to locate the US journalist.
“There are a few locations that our government thinks he might be. I know these geolocations, and I plan to go to each one of them,” Mouaz Moustafa told The Washington Post earlier this week.
Tice was captured on August 13, 2012, while reporting in Daraya, a suburb of the Syrian capital, a few days after turning 31. Tice was last seen in a short video posted online a month after he was detained, where he appeared blindfolded, and led around by armed men, according to CBS.
Tice, a Marine veteran, worked as a freelance journalist and photographer for outlets, including CBS and the Post, before he was captured.