The mom of Austin Tice, an American journalist lacking in Syria for greater than a decade, stated on Friday that she was assured her son was alive, citing info she stated had come from a “vital supply” that she didn’t determine however that had been vetted by the US authorities and handled as credible.
“He’s being cared for and he’s properly – we do know that,” Debra Tice stated.
Tice’s mom and different family spoke at an occasion Friday following a White Home assembly with nationwide safety officers that unfolded amid turmoil in Syria, as rebel fighters who’ve already captured the northern metropolis of Aleppo, the nation’s largest, pressed their march towards President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
“The information we’re listening to from the Center East is the form of factor that may unsettle a mother,” Debra Tice stated, later including: “After I take into consideration battle, I by no means have a contented second.”
Austin Tice’s sister, Naomi, stated she had requested officers whether or not there was a technique to leverage the unrest to assist safe Austin’s freedom: “We have been mainly simply advised that we have to wait and see the way it pans out” – a response she known as “past irritating”.
Tice’s father, Marc, echoed that sentiment, noting that conferences this week with White Home and state division officers had devolved into finger-pointing.
“We’ve got seen what actual dedication appears to be like like. We’ve seen it in Russia. We’ve seen it in China, seen in Venezuela, you see it in Gaza,” he stated, referring to locations the place hostages have been launched in latest months. “And we’ve but to see it for us.”
He, too, declined to talk about the knowledge pointing to his son being alive however stated: “We’re assured that this info is recent. It indicated as late as earlier this yr that Austin is alive and being cared for. And we do hope to make as a lot of this public as we are able to.”
Tice, who’s from Houston and whose work had been revealed by the Washington Submit, McClatchy newspapers and different shops, disappeared in August 2012 at a checkpoint in a contested space west of Damascus.
A video launched weeks later confirmed him blindfolded and held by armed males and saying: “Oh, Jesus.” He has not been heard from since. In 2022, Joe Biden stated that the US knew “with certainty” that the Syrian authorities have been holding Tice, an allegation the Assad authorities instantly denied.
Within the ultimate months of the final Trump administration, two US officers – the federal government’s prime hostage negotiator, Roger Carstens, and Kash Patel, now Trump’s decide to guide the FBI – made a secret go to to Damascus to hunt info on Tice and different Individuals who had disappeared in Syria.
It was the highest-level discuss in years between the US and Assad’s authorities, although Syrian officers supplied no significant info on Tice.
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