Hostage return sparks new hope for Marine vet’s liberty

After 12 years, the mother of a Marine veteran abducted in Syria says a short window has opened that could finally bring her son home. Still, it’s a window that could soon close as others have before.

This week marks 12 years since the abduction of Austin Tice, 43, a freelance journalist taken hostage in Syria on Aug. 14, 2012, while covering the Syrian civil war.

At an awareness and fundraising event at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday, Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, shared her family’s struggles to bring him home and expressed hope for his safe return before delivering a message directly to him.

“You will walk free again,” Debra, 63, said. “I love you and hang in there.”

The anniversary comes on the heels of an historic U.S.-Russian prisoner exchange that freed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was held for over a year, and Marine veteran Paul Whelan, who had been detained since 2018, among others.

That exchange shows the United States can negotiate with adversary regimes and return prisoners, Debra Tice said. And with President Joe Biden no longer running for re-election, she hopes his freedom from political ties will push forward negotiations that have thwarted three presidential administrations.

“I truly believe Austin’s freedom is closer now than ever before,” Debra said. “This is the time we need to press in because the government is well placed to act and they are rightly encouraged by their recent success.”

But, she said, “missed windows” are a major reason why her son is still missing.

“We are in the window now, the conditions for Austin’s safe return are near perfect,” Debra said. “Our government must act now.”

Biden issued a statement Wednesday calling on the Syrian government to “immediately” release Tice.

“This week marks 12 long, terrible years since American Austin Tice was abducted in Syria,” Biden said.

“We have repeatedly pressed the government of Syria to work with us so that we can, at last, bring Austin home,” Biden wrote. “Today, I once again call for his immediate release.”

In 2022, Biden said the U.S. government knew “with certainty” that the Syrian government was holding Tice. Syrian officials denied this in a statement.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, sent Biden a letter on Aug. 6, signed by 34 other senators, pledging their commitment to working with the president to bring Tice home.

The senators noted they had joined House colleagues in urging former President Donald Trump to use the “full weight of his national security team” to ensure Austin’s release.

“We now reiterate the request that you do everything possible to bring Austin home,” the senators said.

Politics and a family’s love

Austin commissioned as Marine officer in 2005 and served multiple Middle East deployments before concluding his time in the Marine Corps Reserve as a captain, including an Afghanistan tour with 1st Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company in 2011.

He returned to the region as a freelance journalist in 2012.

At the time, he reported for The Washington Post and McClatchy on the Syrian conflict. In the days leading up to his kidnapping at a Damascus, Syria, checkpoint, Austin was headed home to finish his studies at Georgetown Law School.

Five weeks later, a 43-second video surfaced showing Austin blindfolded and surrounded by armed men on a rocky hillside.

Since then, Debra Tice, her husband and Austin’s father, Marc Tice, along with other family members have kept near-constant attention on Austin’s plight through the Obama, Biden and Trump administrations.

In late 2012, more than a year after the Syrian conflict erupted, Obama announced the U.S. government would formally recognize the Syrian Opposition Coalition instead of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The decision to break diplomatic ties with Assad’s government had immediate and long-lasting consequences for Austin, multiple people interviewed by Military Times over the past six years have said.

In the years that followed, Trump and Biden publicly touted efforts to locate and return Austin.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken released a statement Wednesday reinforcing that commitment.

“We call on the Syrian government to work with the United States to end Austin’s captivity and to provide an accounting for the fate of other Americans who went missing in Syria,” Blinken wrote. “We’re not going to relent until we find a way to bring Austin’s unjust detention to an end.”

Current U.S.-Syrian relations may be the tangled knot that binds Austin. But after 12 years, Debra has long-tired of the politics and simply wants to cut that knot and bring her son home.

“This is about freeing Americans. Our negotiators should do the best they can. They must make deals,” Debra said. “Every kind of hostage situation requires engagement, negotiation and concessions.”