The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who is believed to be held in Syria, was joyful when another U.S. citizen was found last week following the collapse of the Assad regime.
Tice was taken by Bashar al-Assad’s government more than a dozen years ago, and the U.S. government has been unable to locate him in the week since Assad fled to Russia. However, Tice’s family is hopeful they will get to see their son again, given Syria’s political change.
Assad’s detention centers and prisons have been opened and the prisoners, many of whom were political prisoners whose only crimes were opposing Assad, have reunited with their families.
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“We met with the State Department, we met with the White House. And, you know, it was Saturday night, when this happened, when they breached Damascus. And, for us, you know, this kind of chaos represented a huge opening, a huge opportunity,” Debra Tice said on NBC News’s Meet The Press on Sunday. “And, especially when people started going into the prisons, finding their families, you know, there was a man that had been held in silence for 34 years, and he was reunited with his family, and so, you know, we’re just really excited about being a reunited family.”
An American was found last week on the outskirts of the capital. There was initial optimism that the individual was Tice, but it turned out to be another American who was detained by the former Syrian government.
The man, identified as Travis Timmerman, said he walked from Lebanon into Syria on a religious pilgrimage months ago and was arrested by authorities.
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Debra Tice said her oldest daughter came into her room in the middle of the night to show her the video of Timmerman. Despite the initial speculation that the American was Tice, she knew it wasn’t her son.
“I’m kind of waking up out of the fog, and you know, I took a glance and I said, ‘No, that is not Austin.’ She said, ‘Yeah, no, no, Mom, it’s not Austin, but we had to wake you up,” Debra Tice recalled. “We had to – we had to ask you about it.’ And then, of course, we had so many people reaching out. ‘This is so great. What a wonderful day.’ And so, it’s almost like having a rehearsal, just an inkling of what it’s going to really feel like when it is Austin walking free.”
The U.S. military has transported Timmerman out of Syria.
“The way that I’ve been feeling about the people that I see coming out, and even Travis, is, that feeling where, as humans, we share joy, right? We share suffering, too, but we share joy,” Debra Tice added. “And so, just seeing these families reunited, thinking about Travis’s family being reunited with him, you know? What incredible joy. And we can share that.”
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An inmate in one of Assad’s prisons who claimed he was in the cell across from Tice said he last saw the American alive in July 2022, according to NBC News. Tice disappeared on August 13, 2012, while covering the country’s civil war.
President Joe Biden said following the collapse of the Assad regime that the U.S. government believes Tice is alive and “think[s] we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that yet.”