Documents recovered from one of Syria’s former intelligence branches show how Bashar al Assad’s regime tracked foreign journalists as they entered the country to cover the civil war, including a long-missing American war correspondent.
The documents mention Austin Tice, who disappeared while working for the Washington Post and the McClatchy news chain. The files do not list him as deceased.
It’s an important distinction, because little is known about Tice’s disappearance. His mother, Debra Tice, recently traveled to Syria in hopes of learning details about his detention and whereabouts.
“I feel very strongly that Austin’s here, and I think he knows I’m here,” she told Reuters in mid-January in Damascus.
Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), a collective of journalists and OCCRP partner, found the documents in late December while combing through files left behind during the hasty collapse of the Assad regime earlier that month.
The documents are dated March 4, 2013, about seven months after Tice’s presumed capture. They suggest that he was alive at the time, but give no further details. If alive today, Tice would be 43.
SIRAJ interviewed a former prisoner who said he had been detained by Syrian intelligence in 2018 in a cell next to one that he believed held Tice. The man, who requested anonymity due to security concerns, said he did not know who Tice was at the time. But he recalled that guards would bring an English translator to speak to the prisoner, who they referred to as Austin.
“The translator would ask him, ‘Austin, what do you want to eat today?’ I could hear the translator talking to Austin directly, because I was close to his cell,” the former prisoner said.
Former members of the Assad regime who could have information about Tice have fled the country or gone into hiding since a rebel coalition took control on December 8.
And Syrian officials were uncooperative before the regime fell, according to a person who has been involved for more than a decade in U.S. efforts to find Tice.
“In numerous meetings and exchanges with the Syrian government we were never able to… obtain proof of life or an admission that they had had him at any point,” said the person, speaking anonymously to avoid disrupting ongoing search efforts.
Tice was detained at a checkpoint after leaving a Damascus suburb as he headed for Lebanon, according to a website run by his family. Just over a month later, the family was sent a 43-second video showing Tice with a group of armed men. The family never received any more information after that video, which had been titled “Austin Tice is Alive.”
The documents discovered by SIRAJ are written in Arabic and include a list of journalists who snuck into Syria to cover the war. Among those listed along with Tice are reporters from BBC and CNN, as well as Spain’s El Pais and France’s Le Monde newspapers.
Also listed is Marie Colvin who was killed along with French photographer Remi Ochlik in a targeted attack by Syrian forces in the city of Homs.
“She entered the country illegally to Homs—Baba Omar in the first month of 2012 and she died there,” reads the matter-of-fact entry.
The entry for Tice says simply: “He entered Syria illegally at the Turkish border in mid-June and he spent several days in Khan Shaikhoun where he met individuals who call themselves the Free Army.”
That town in northwestern Syria gained infamy in 2017 for the use of chemical weapons by Syrian forces. The Syrian Free Army was the name given to opposition forces who rose up against the Assad regime in 2011, leading to a nearly 14-year civil war.
The advocacy group Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF) said 23 journalists remained in prison the day the Assad regime fell. Another seven journalists “were victims of enforced disappearances — abducted to unknown locations.”
Assad’s regime and its affiliates have killed at least 181 media professionals since 2011, according to RSF.