The mother of journalist Austin Tice – who was detained in Syria in 2012 – told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that seeing another missing American, Travis Timmerman, found in Damascus recently felt “almost like having a rehearsal … of what it’s going to really feel like when it is Austin walking free”.
Initial reports on Wednesday speculated that the American found might be Austin Tice – but Debra Tice said she knew immediately it wasn’t her son.
“My oldest daughter came into my room at 4.25, and said: ‘Mom, you know, we have this video. You need to look at it. We don’t think it’s Austin, but a lot of people think it’s Austin, so we want you to look and see if it’s Austin,’” Debra Tice told NBC’s Kristen Welker.
She added: “I took a glance and I said: ‘No, that is not Austin.’”
That day, the Tice family received a flood of congratulatory messages from people who thought Timmerman was Austin. When she reflected on the news, Debra Tice said: “It’s almost like having a rehearsal, you know? Just an inkling of what it’s going to really feel like when it is Austin walking free.”
Austin Tice, a former US Marine and freelance journalist from Houston, was abducted in August 2012 while covering Syria’s civil war. Shortly after he disappeared, the US state department said that he was being held by the Syrian government. Then president Bashar al-Assad denied it for years.
Since the recent collapse of Assad’s regime, thousands of prisoners have been freed, but Austin Tice’s whereabouts remain unknown. In the last few weeks, a former prisoner told NBC News he had been detained in a cell across from Tice and saw him alive as recently as July 2022.
In light of Assad’s ousting, the White House declared the recovery of Austin Tice a “top priority”. National security adviser Jake Sullivan told Good Morning America on Monday that US officials are working with Turkish intermediaries and local contacts in Syria.
“This is a top priority for us – to find Austin Tice, to locate the prison where he may be held, get him out, get him home safely to his family,” Sullivan said.
According to data by the Committee to Protect Journalists, Tice is one of at least five journalists being held in Syria on undisclosed charges – and the only American.
It is still unclear if Tice is alive.
