Efforts To Locate U.S. Journalist Austin Tice Intensify After Fall Of Assad Regime | EUROtoday

Efforts to find Austin Tice, the U.S. journalist who was kidnapped whereas protecting the civil warfare in Syria over 12 years in the past, have gained new urgency following the sudden fall of Bashar Assad’s regime within the nation.

U.S. officers have pinned down a variety of prisons in Syria that might maintain info which they consider may cause them to Tice, in line with The New York Times, because the insurgent forces who overthrew Assad’s regime have begun to empty the nation’s political prisons.

President Joe Biden over the weekend appeared cautiously optimistic that Tice will likely be introduced residence.

“We believe he’s alive,” Biden stated. “We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet.”

However, U.S. navy officers famous there have been at present no plans for a hostage rescue mission, in line with the Times.

Matthew Miller, a spokesperson for the State Department, on Tuesday stated the U.S. authorities has “no higher priority than the safe return of Austin Tice to his family,” however added he had no additional particulars to share concerning the standing of search efforts.

John Kirby, the White House nationwide safety communications adviser, echoed Miller, saying that whereas this second “could present an opportunity for us to glean more information about [Tice]his whereabouts, his condition,” there are nonetheless many unknowns.

“I would just tell you that our going assumption is that he’s still alive; that we have no indication, no information to the contrary,” Kirby stated of Tice.

Roger Carstens, the particular presidential envoy for hostage affairs, has traveled to Beirut to hunt info on Tice’s location, the State Department stated earlier this week. (Lebanon has lengthy mediated talks over the destiny of Tice.)

HuffPost has reached out to the State Department for touch upon the standing of the search efforts for Tice.

Meanwhile, Tice’s dad and mom have stated they’ve what they described as credible info indicating that their son is being “treated well.”

“We have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government that Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well, and there is no doubt about that,” his mother, Debra, stated on the National Press Club Friday.

But Debra Tice additionally expressed frustration with the federal government’s method within the case, telling CNN’s Erin Burnett “there isn’t an urgency about finding him and making sure that he’s OK.”

The U.S. has lengthy maintained the American journalist was being held in Syria regardless of the Assad regime’s denials.

The collapse of that regime, although, following a shock offensive that prompted the previous Syrian president and his household to flee to Moscow, appears to have reignited hope inside the U.S. that Tice might be discovered.

The head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, a U.S. nonprofit, was additionally attributable to arrive in Damascus on Wednesday as a part of an effort to find the U.S. journalist.

“There are a few locations that our government thinks he might be. I know these geolocations, and I plan to go to each one of them,” Mouaz Moustafa informed The Washington Post earlier this week.

Tice was captured on Aug. 13, 2012, whereas reporting in Daraya, a suburb of the Syrian capital, just a few days after turning 31. Tice was final seen in a brief video posted on-line a month after he was detained, the place he appeared blindfolded, and led round by armed males, in line with CBS.

Tice, a Marine veteran, labored as a contract journalist and photographer for shops, together with CBS and the Post, earlier than he was captured.