Damascus, Syria — The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who was taken captive during a reporting trip to Syria in August 2012, has arrived in Damascus to intensify the search for her son. She expressed hope that she can bring him home with her.
Tice, a freelance reporter for The Washington Post and McClatchy, was among the first U.S. journalists to enter Syria following the outbreak of the civil war. His mother, Debra Tice, traveled to the Syrian capital from Lebanon with Nizar Zakka, the head of Hostage Aid Worldwide, an organization dedicated to finding Austin and believes he is still in Syria.
“It’d be lovely to put my arms around Austin while I’m here. It’d be the best,” Debra Tice told Reuters in the Syrian capital on Saturday, a city she last visited in 2015 to discuss her son’s situation with Syrian authorities, who subsequently denied her visas.
The recent overthrow of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December by Syrian rebels has permitted her return from her home in Texas. “I feel very strongly that Austin’s here, and I think he knows I’m here… I’m here,” she stated.
Debra Tice and Zakka aim to meet with Syria’s new authorities, including the head of its new administration, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to press for information about Austin. They harbor hope that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, set to be inaugurated soon, will advocate for this cause. “I am hoping to get some answers. And of course, you know, we have [the] inauguration on Monday, and I think that should be a huge change,” she noted.
“I know that President Trump is quite a negotiator, so I have a lot of confidence there. But now we have an unknown on this (Syrian) side. It’s difficult to know if those that are coming in even have the information about him,” she added.
Austin Tice, now 43, was taken captive in August 2012 while traveling through the Damascus suburb of Daraya. Reports suggest that in 2013, Tice, a former Marine, managed to escape his cell and was seen moving between residences in the upscale Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus. This brief escape and subsequent recapture were initially reported by The New York Times.
After his escape, he was recaptured, likely by forces accountable to Assad, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Debra Tice has made previous trips to Syria in 2012 and 2015 to engage with Syrian authorities, who have never confirmed that Tice was in their custody, as both she and Zakka have stated. She criticized the outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, asserting they did not negotiate vigorously enough for her son’s release, even in recent months.
“We certainly felt like President Biden was very well positioned to do everything possible to bring Austin home, right? I mean, this was the end of his career. This would be a wonderful thing for him to do. So, we had an expectation. He pardoned his own son, right? So, where’s my son?” Debra Tice remarked, expressing her frustration.
As she crossed the Lebanese border into Syria, her “mind was just spinning,” and she became emotional discussing the tens of thousands of families with loved ones held in Assad’s notorious prison system, whose fates remain unknown to this day. “I have a lot in common with a lot of Syrian mothers and families, and just thinking about how this is affecting them — do they have the same hope that I do, that they’re going to open a door, that they’re going to see their loved one?” she reflected.
