By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped during a trip to Syria in August 2012, expressed hope on Sunday that unrest in Syria would lead to her son's release.
News that Missouri resident Travis Timmerman has been released from a Syrian prison by rebels sounds “more like training,” Debra Tice said. Her children woke her up when photos of Timmerman began circulating on social media and she misidentified him as Tice.
When asked if Timmerman's misidentification was a moment of false hope, Debra Tice instead described it as a moment of joy to be shared. Timmerman said he traveled to Syria on a spiritual mission earlier this year and was arrested for entering the country illegally.
“It was like a dress rehearsal…an idea of what it would really feel like to have Austin free,” she told NBC's “Meet the Press.”
Tice is the focus of a large-scale search operation following the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week after 13 years of civil war. Opposition fighters led by the hardline Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham have released thousands of people from prisons in Damascus where Assad is holding political opponents, ordinary civilians and foreigners.
A week after Assad's ouster, some US officials fear that Tice may have been killed during the latest round of Israeli air strikes. Officials are also concerned that if Tice had been held underground in a cell, he might have run out of air to breathe, as Assad's forces cut off electricity to several prisons in Damascus before the president fled.
Asked whether the US government should have been searching for Tice on the ground in Syria, Debra Tice was cautious, expressing gratitude for the efforts of journalists and other civilians on the ground looking for him, including a worldwide hostage assistance organization.
“The United States government has made the decision not to go to Damascus. So, my feeling is, if they don’t want to be there, they shouldn’t be there. And the people who are there are the people who are there,” she said.
Tice, who worked as a freelance correspondent for The Washington Post and McClatchy, was one of the first American journalists to arrive in Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.
In August 2012, during the fighting in Aleppo, he was captured.
Weeks later, a video was posted on YouTube showing Tice blindfolded and with his hands tied behind his back. Armed men apparently dressed in Afghan uniforms took him up the hill chanting “Allahu Akbar” in an apparent attempt to blame Islamist insurgents for his capture, although the video only attracted attention when it was posted on Facebook. 🙂 A page linked to Assad supporters.
Reuters was the first to report on Friday that in 2013, Tice, a former Marine, managed to escape from his cell and was seen moving between houses in the streets of the upscale Mezzeh neighborhood in Damascus.
