A former member of Syria's National Defence Force has claimed that Bashar al-Assad personally approved the 2012 abduction of American journalist Austin Tice, with a driver the reporter trusted allegedly feeding information to regime-linked figures, according to a new BBC investigation. The allegation has not been independently verified.
Tice, a former US Marine captain who was studying law at Georgetown University, disappeared in Syria on 14 August 2012 while covering the civil war. The BBC's investigation, drawing on interviews with former NDF members and newly obtained Syrian intelligence files, found that the operation to capture him had been planned for more than a month.
