June 2 (UPI) — Missing American journalist Austin Tice was imprisoned by the regime of the since-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012 with his whereabouts now not known, according to top secret intelligence files uncovered by the BBC.
Former Syrian officials also have confirmed Tice’s detention to the BBC. The material was part of a BBC investigation more than one year ago for a Radio 4 podcast series in accompanying a Syrian investigator to an intelligence facility.
The Assad regime had denied they had imprisoned him, and didn’t know where he was.
The U.S. government believes he had been held by the Syrian government.
Tice was a freelance journalist, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a law student at Georgetown University.
He had gone to Syria to report on the civil war.
Tice vanished near the Syrian capital of Damascus in August 2012, just days after his 31st birthday.
About seven weeks later, a video posted online showed him blindfolded and with his hands bound. He was also forced to recite an Islamic declaration of faith by armed men.
U.S. officials and analysts doubt he was abducted by a jihadist group and the scene “may have been staged.”
Instead, Tice allegedly was held by members of a paramilitary force loyal to Assad called the National Defence Forces.
The files, which are labeled “Austin Tice,” include communication from different branches of Syrian intelligence. Law enforcement verified their authenticity.
In one “top secret” communication, he was held in a detention facility in Damascus in 2012. A Syrian official confirmed to the BBC he was there until at least February 2013.
The BBC reported Tice briefly escaped by squeezing through a window in his cell, but he was later recaptured.
Tice had developed stomach issues from a viral infection.
A man who visited the facility told the BBC that Tice “looked sad, and that the joy had gone from his face.”
A former member of the NDF told the BBC that Tice was a “card” that could be played in diplomatic negotiations with the United States.
After Assad’s ouster in December 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden and mother, Debra Tice, said they believed he was alive. She said he was “treated well,” according to a “significant source.”
Rebel forces stormed his regime-run jails in Damascus and other Syrian regions and freed them. Tice was not among them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has registered 35,000 cases of people who have gone missing in Syria in the past 13 years. Syria’s Network for Human Rights put the number of Syrians “in forced disappearance” at 80,000 to 85,000 killed under torture in Assad’s detention centers.
Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria’s prisons since Assad’s ouster, according to human rights network.
On May 14, Trump met with the Syrian Arab Republic’s new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Trump told reporters, “Austin has not been seen in many, many years,” and gave no other details.
