Syria: PonteSud – Charissa Swanepoel
Top secret intelligence files uncovered by the BBC confirm for the first time that missing American journalist Austin Tice was imprisoned by the regime of the now-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Former Syrian officials have also confirmed Mr Tice’s detention to the BBC. The US government has previously stated that it believed he had been held by the Syrian government, but the Assad regime continuously denied this, and nothing was known about the details of his detention.
The intelligence files – along with testimony from several former regime officials – now reveal what happened to the journalist after his abduction.
Austin Tice vanished near the Syrian capital of Damascus in August 2012, just days after his 31st birthday. He had been working as a freelance journalist.
Around seven weeks later, a video posted online showed him blindfolded and with his hands bound being forced to recite an Islamic declaration of faith by a group of armed men.
However, the impression given – that Mr Tice had been abducted by a jihadist group – was quickly questioned by analysts and US officials, who said the scene “may have been staged”.
No group or government has ever claimed responsibility for his disappearance and he has not been heard from since, fuelling widespread speculation as to his whereabouts.
A man who visited the facility where he was held and saw him told the BBC that Mr Tice was treated better than the Syrian detainees, but that “he looked sad, and that the joy had gone from his face”.
But when prisons were emptied after the fall of the government, there was no sign of Mr Tice and his whereabouts are still unknown.
He vanished into a vast and complex system of detention. The UK-based monitoring group the Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates that 100,000 people disappeared under the Assad regime.
