By Humeyra Pamuk and Daphne Psaledakis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department on Monday said there is no U.S. government organization currently on the ground in Syria for the search of Austin Tice, an American journalist taken captive during a reporting trip in August 2012, but did not rule out the possibility.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters at a regular news briefing that the U.S. was continuing to try and locate Tice, but did not have specific information about his whereabouts.
When asked why the U.S. has still not yet sent a delegation to Syria, Miller said: “I’m not ruling out that we won’t send personnel to Damascus. Stay tuned over the coming days.”
Tice, a former U.S. Marine, is the focus of a massive search following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after 13 years of civil war. Rebels, led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), have released thousands of people from prisons in Damascus where Assad held political opponents, ordinary civilians and foreigners.
Miller added that the U.S. government over the past week has had communications with HTS that have in part been largely focused on getting help to find Tice.
“We have a number of people engaged on trying to find Austin Tice and bring him home, and we communicated directly to HTS that anything that they could do to help us find him, we would greatly appreciate, and they committed to do that,” Miller said.
“We do not have specific information about where he is. We continue to work to try to locate him.”
U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this month the U.S. government believes Tice is alive.
Tice, who worked as a freelance reporter for the Washington Post and McClatchy, was one of the first U.S. journalists to make it into Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.
In August 2012, while traveling through the Damascus suburb of Daraya, he was taken captive.
Weeks later, a YouTube video was published showing Tice blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back. He was led up a hill by armed men in what appeared to be Afghan garb and shouting “God is great” in an apparent bid to blame Islamist rebels for his capture, although the video only gained attention when it was posted on a Facebook page associated with Assad supporters.
On Friday, Reuters was first to report that Tice in 2013 managed to slip out of his cell and was seen moving between houses in the streets of Damascus’ upscale Mazzeh neighborhood.
(This story has been corrected to say that Tice was taken captive in Daraya, not Aleppo, in paragraph 10)
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk, Costas Pitas and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Franklin Paul and Paul Simao)
