Biden urges Syrian President Bashar Assad to release American journalist Austin Tice, 10 years after his abduction
President Joe Biden said Wednesday the U.S. is certain that the Syrian government is holding American journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in the war-torn country a decade ago. He urged Damascus to help bring Tice back home.
“We know with certainty that he has been held by the Government of Syria,” Biden said in the statement adding that “we have repeatedly asked the government of Syria to work with us so that we can bring Austin home.” In May, top Lebanese security official Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim met with U.S. officials in Washington as part of mediation efforts between the U.S. and Syria for Tice’s release. Ibrahim, the chief of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate, has mediated complicated hostage releases in the past.
Blinken said Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will continue to engage with the Syrian government in close co-ordination with the White House, the Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, and the State Department. Tice is from Houston and his work had been published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and other outlets. He went to Syria to cover the conflict that started in 2011 and has since left hundreds of thousands dead and nearly half the pre-war population of 23 million displaced. More than 5 million of the displaced are refugees outside the country.
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