Joe Biden has said that the US is aware of “with sure wager” that the Syrian govt is maintaining Austin Tice – an American journalist who has been missing for a decade – and known as on Damascus to free up him.
Ten years after the freelance reporter disappeared whereas reporting on the Syrian battle, Biden said the US govt is aware of “that [Tice] has been held by the Syrian regime”.
Noting that the US has “many instances requested the government of Syria to work with us”, Biden said in an announcement on Wednesday that he’s “calling on Syria to total this and attend us bring him home”.
Tice is believed to be the longest-held American journalist in historical previous. No community has claimed accountability for Tice’s abduction, and the Syrian govt denies involvement.
Biden’s commentary described Tice as a son, brother, US marine aged and “an investigative journalist who attach the truth above himself and traveled to Syria to inform the field the staunch designate of battle”.
Tice, who grew up in Houston because the eldest of seven siblings, became homeschooled, and enrolled in college at the age of 15. Later, throughout law college, he determined to affix the US marines and became deployed to Afghanistan. He changed into attracted to journalism. He traveled to Turkey in Would possibly perhaps well perhaps 2012 susceptible 30 and crossed the border into Syria. He began submitting dispatches and doing stringing work for US publications.
He had been in Syria 83 days when he became detained in a regime-controlled reveal in Darayya, a suburb of Damascus, en route to the Lebanese border.
About five weeks after his abduction, a video seemed on YouTube of males with rifles main Tice, blindfolded, along a hill. He became confirmed reciting a prayer in Arabic and including, in English: “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus.”
Outmoded American officials possess said that the video perceived to be a “shameful ploy” by the Syrian regime to make it ogle as if Tice had been kidnapped by a rebellion community. Neither the Syrian govt nor any rebellion community has ever issued any demands connected to Tice’s detention.
Since that video there had been no extra public photos of Tice. The US govt believes he’s alive, basically based mostly in fragment on intelligence in 2016 that Tice became viewed at a clinic in Damascus being handled for dehydration.
As president, Donald Trump took an curiosity in Tice’s case, and even reportedly began constructing a belief that can perhaps perhaps enable the Syrians to come attend him whereas saving face, however it never came to fruition.
Tice’s other folks, Debra and Marc Tice, met with Biden at the White Home earlier this yr. At the meeting, Biden instant members of the national security council to “desire without extend” with Syria, in line with Texas Month-to-month. The US govt has supplied a reward of up to $1m for knowledge main to Tice’s safe return.
Syria is one in every of basically the most unsafe nations on this planet for newshounds, in line with the Committee to Offer protection to Journalists.