WASHINGTON — The United States knows “with certainty” that the Syrian government has held Austin Tice, a reporter and former U.S. Marine missing in Syria since 2012, and is asking for its help bringing him home, President Joe Biden said in a statement on Wednesday.
Marking a decade since Tice was taken captive, Biden said that “there is no higher priority in my administration than the recovery and return of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.”
Tice traveled to Syria in the summer of 2012 to cover the war as a freelance journalist for McClatchy, The Washington Post, and other publications. U.S. officials believe he was detained at a Syrian government checkpoint southwest of Damascus on Aug. 14 of that year. A video emerged six weeks after his disappearance purporting to show him in captivity.
