Mother of Missing U.S. Journalist Asks Syria’s New Leaders for Help

The mother of Austin Tice, an American journalist abducted in Syria, said on Monday that she had met with Syria’s new leader in Damascus and expressed hope that “a page will be turned” in the more than decade-long search for her son.

Debra Tice gave a news conference in Damascus on Monday after the meeting with Ahmed al-Shara, whose rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham led the sudden offensive last month that toppled President Bashar al-Assad, ending more than 50 years of Assad family rule in Syria. Syria’s state news agency also reported on the meeting, posting pictures of her in conversation with Mr. al-Shara at the presidential palace.

Although she had no new information on her son’s whereabouts, Ms. Tice, who arrived in Damascus on Saturday, said she felt optimistic that Syria’s new rebel leaders would help her and Syrian families searching for loved ones still missing after being held in the old regime’s notorious prisons.

“It was so wonderful to learn that they are dedicated and determined to bring home my son and your sons,” Ms. Tice said, addressing Syrians searching for missing loved ones as well. “They know what we are going through.”

Ms. Tice said that as far as she knew, her son was still being held captive, but the turmoil since Mr. al-Assad’s ouster made it much more difficult to ascertain his whereabouts.

“It’s like starting all over again,” she said.

Mr. Tice was kidnapped at a checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus in 2012. He appeared not long after in a video, blindfolded and held by masked men with assault rifles. Former U.S. officials said they believed that the video was a ploy by the government to blame rebels for his disappearance.

Former and current U.S. officials have said they believe Mr. Tice managed to escape several weeks after his capture through a window of a prison cell, but was caught by Syrian intelligence.

President Joe Biden said in December, after Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, that U.S. officials believed Mr. Tice was still being held captive and hoped to bring him home, while adding that they had “no direct evidence” about his status.

Officials in his administration spent years looking for Mr. Tice, including a visit to Damascus in December by his special envoy on hostages. The White House also gave the rebel group a list of former Syrian officials who might have knowledge about Mr. Tice, a freelance journalist from Houston who wrote for The Washington Post and other outlets.

But Ms. Tice has recently been critical of the Biden administration, saying it did not negotiate hard enough for her son’s release.

Ms. Tice said she felt hopeful about the incoming administration of Donald Trump. “Things are going to change,” she said. “I’m looking forward to that. His people have already reached out to me.”

It was Ms. Tice’s first visit to Syria since 2015, when she met with officials of the Assad government, who never confirmed whether they held her son and later stopped issuing her visas.

During her meeting with Mr. al-Shara, Ms. Tice said, he spoke to her of his own time in prison. In 2003, Mr. al-Shara joined Al Qaeda to fight the U.S. occupation of Iraq, where Mr. Tice once served as a Marine. Mr. al-Shara spent years in a U.S. prison in Iraq, according to Arab media accounts.

After leading Al Qaeda’s Syrian branch in the early days of the 13-year rebellion against Mr. al-Assad, Mr. al-Sharaa reformulated the group as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in 2017 and has sought to distance it from its Al Qaeda past.

Former and current U.S. officials have said they believe Mr. Tice was held in several security-service detention facilities, including Branch 248 and Branch 215, both believed to be military intelligence sites.

During her visit to Syria she visited both places, Ms. Tice said, describing them as an “awful, terrible nightmare.”