The Worldwide Hostage Assistance Organization said on Tuesday that information in its possession indicates that American journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped in Syria, “was alive until at least January 2024,” adding that the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad “kept He was taken hostage for fear of a fate similar to “what happened to the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.”
The American organization indicated during a press conference held in the Syrian capital, Damascus, that the Assad regime “emptied some prisons days before its fall,” stressing that it has “confidence in the Syrian people to help reach Tice.”
She noted that there is a serious belief that the head of the former Syrian regime, “had kept Tice hostage, after what happened with the Libyan leader Gaddafi, out of fear for himself,” adding: “Therefore, we do not believe that he handed him over to another country.”
The organization noted that it had provided the names of some of the figures responsible for the kidnapping of the American journalist to human rights organizations.
Over the past four months, Hostage Aid has led a campaign in Syria and neighboring countries, reaching millions of Syrians weekly with messages in Arabic, searching for any information about Tice.
This campaign recently led to the discovery of Travis Timmerman, an American citizen who was reported missing by the US government in Hungary, while in fact, he had been detained in a Syrian prison since early 2024.
It is noteworthy that Tice was born in 1981 and hails from the city of Houston in the US state of Texas. He disappeared in 2012 while covering the war in Syria.
Tice has worked for The Washington Post, McClatchy News Agency, Agence France-Presse, and other organizations. He graduated from Georgetown University and was a captain in the US Marine Corps, according to information available about him.
He has also won numerous awards for his reporting, including the George Polk Award for War Coverage in 2012, according to a website created by his family.
US authorities believe that the Assad regime has detained Tice since his disappearance, and have made ongoing efforts to negotiate his return home.
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