U.S. officials are reaching out to people on the ground in Syria to seek information about Austin Tice, an American journalist captured more than 12 years ago in SyriaWhite House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday.
“It is an absolute priority for us to find Austin Tice, locate the prison where he may be held, get him out of there and bring him safely home to his family,” Sullivan said in an interview with the “Good Morning America” program. from the ABC network.
“We’re talking through the Turks and others to people on the ground in Syria to say, ‘Help us with this. Help us bring Austin Tice home.'”
Tice, a former U.S. Marine and freelance journalist, was 31 when he was kidnapped in August 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al Assad. overthrown by Syrian rebels who took the capital Damascus on Sunday. Syria had denied that he had been detained.
Assad fled to Russia after 13 years of civil war and six decades of autocratic rule by his family.
President Joe Biden said Sunday that the US government believes Tice is alive.
“We believe he is alive. We believe we can recover him, but we don’t have direct evidence of that yet. And Assad must be held accountable,” Biden said. “We have to identify where it is.”
Sullivan met with Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, on Friday at the White House after she told reporters at the National Press Club that she believed her son was alive.
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