Sunday, May 3, is World Press Freedom Day. The family of missing journalist Austin Tice, a Houston native and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, is using the occasion to draw renewed attention to his case.
The Tice family said they have reason to believe he is still alive and may have been moved from Syria to Iran.
Austin Tice, whose work had been featured in The Washington Post and McClatchy newspapers, among other publications, was reporting on the Syrian Civil War on Aug. 14, 2012, when he disappeared from a checkpoint west of Damascus. A video released shortly afterward showed him being held by armed men.
Naomi Tice, one of Austin's sisters, said the family has information that he may be in the hands of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which could have moved him from Syria to Iran, either in the midst of or following the fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime in late 2024.
"Assad ... consistently said that he did not have Austin, and he has really held strong on that message," Naomi Tice said. "And so, we also know that Iran manages some of the detention facilities in Syria. And so, that technicality could be one of the reasons why Assad said that he didn’t have them because Iran was technically in control of them at the time."
A search of Syria for former Assad-held political prisoners after the Assad regime fell failed to reveal Austin Tice's whereabouts.
"With the regime change, we do think, at that point, Austin might have been brought over to Iran during that time," Naomi Tice said. "Once again, this isn’t confirmed, but we have strong reason to believe that might be the case."
The Tice family is urging the Trump administration to reach out to the Iranian regime directly for information as part of the ongoing negotiations to end the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran.
"We do know that Mike Waltz has been recently re-engaged in that process. He has a history of advocating for Austin, for speaking out about working to get Austin released, in his role as a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and now his role in the Iranian negotiations," Naomi Tice said. "So, really, seeing Mike being involved in those conversations is, once again, something that is hopeful for us."
Following Assad's flight from Syria, the deposed dictator went into exile in Moscow. The Tice family is calling on the Trump administration to put pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make Assad available for questioning by U.S. investigators to find out what he knows about Austin Tice's possible location or fate.
The family is also requesting cooperation from the Israeli government in questioning a former Syrian brigadier general, now under arrest in Austria for alleged war crimes, to find out what information he may have. The former general, Khaled al-Halibi, has been publicly identified by The New York Times as a double agent for the Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency.
"We would like the FBI to reach out to him specifically and see what information he might have, about Austin’s detention, about his whereabouts to the extent that he has any knowledge of them," said Jacob Tice, Austin's brother. "We simply don’t know what he might know because that outreach has not taken place. And we believe there is reason to suspect that he knows something or is able to point us in the direction of something."
Jason Poblete is an attorney who represents wrongfully detained Americans, albeit unconnected to the Austin Tice case. He said the U.S. government could be doing more to help the Tice family locate Austin and secure his return.
"The U.S. government needs to do more for them and demand more of the Islamic regime and the Syrian regime to bring this American home and other Americans home,” Poblete said. “There are a lot of U.S. nationals wrongfully detained in those places, and the American people have no idea that they are there."
Poblete noted that the U.S. government has a history of seeking the return of citizens being held overseas that dates back almost as long as the United States has been an independent country.
"Centuries ago, at the very founding of the Republic, there was a big debate ... during the Barbary Wars ...where Americans, U.S. nationals, were wrongfully detained, held hostage by the Barbary nations. Some of those cases took years to fix. Some of those men never made it home. A lot of those men were put into slavery," Poblete said. "It’s a lesson. We’ve been dealing with this a long time. We can do better."
Austin Tice has now been missing longer than any other U.S. journalist. David Levinson – son of Robert Levinson, the longest-held U.S. hostage – is an advocate for American citizens being held abroad.
"I do know for a fact that the FBI pursues every lead no matter how farfetched or, you know, how much of a long shot it might seem,” David Levinson said. “So, I would imagine that there is a lot of information that the Tice family has access to that gives them hope that Austin is alive."
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