U.S. group travels to Syria in search of missing reporter Austin Tice

A U.S. group is traveling to Syria this week in search of long-missing journalist Austin Tice, after the surprise ouster of President Bashar al-Assad revived hopes that he will be found alive 12 years after his abduction while documenting the country’s brutal civil war.

The head of the Washington-based nonprofit Syrian Emergency Task Force, Mouaz Moustafa, reached the Syria-Turkey border Tuesday and is scheduled to arrive in Damascus, the capital, on Wednesday, he told the Washington Post in a phone interview.

Moustafa said he has “multiple geolocations,” gleaned from contacts within the U.S. government and Syrian rebel groups, of places Tice could be if he is alive. No U.S. government personnel are believed to be in Syria actively searching for Tice.

“There are few locations that our government thinks he might be. I know these geolocations, and I plan to go to each one of them,” he said.

Tice is a Marine Corps veteran and freelance journalist who worked on stories for the Post and other U.S.-based media outlets. He was 31 when he was abducted Aug. 14, 2012, while reporting on the civil war in Syria. Video footage surfaced months later showing him blindfolded and held up by men with assault rifles.

The U.S. government has long maintained that the Syrian government was holding Tice, but Assad’s regime denied the claims.

U.S. officials said in recent days that they have no confirmed intelligence that Tice is alive, but President Joe Biden said that he believes Tice is living and that Washington is committed to bringing him home.

“We think we can get him back,” Biden told reporters at the White House on Sunday, while acknowledging that “we have no direct evidence” of his status.

Moustafa, whose nonprofit boasts a broad array of contacts in Washington and Syria but operates on a limited budget, said the people of Syria “owe a debt” to Tice for his reporting on the civil war.

“He’s someone who left the safety of his home and went to a dangerous place in order to cover the plight of the Syrian people against their tyrant,” he said.

Moustafa said that in 2012, his group initially helped Tice enter northwestern Syria to assist his reporting, and that it was “devastating to everyone” when he was taken.

“My priority is to get him home,” he said, noting that he had made the FBI and the U.S. military aware of his efforts. Moustafa is traveling with five other people in search of Tice and is also assisting other media outlets traveling to Damascus.

The FBI declined to comment. A senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said the U.S. military is not involved in any search.

On Friday, Tice’s family held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, where his mother, Debra, said a “significant source” had said her son is alive. The family declined to comment for this article.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that he would not “get into intelligence information” that leads the Biden administration to believe Tice is alive. “We have no information to the contrary,” he added. “But we also don’t have complete information about where he is, what his condition is.”