By Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The mother of American journalist Austin Tice, who was taken captive during a reporting trip to Syria in August 2012, voiced hope on Sunday that upheaval in Syria will lead to freedom for her son.
Debra Tice said news that Missouri resident Travis Timmerman had been freed from a Syrian prison by rebels felt “like a rehearsal.” Her children woke her up when images of Timmerman began circulating on social media misidentifying him as Tice.
Asked if Timmerman’s misidentification was a moment of false hope, Debra Tice instead characterized it as a moment of joy to be shared. Timmerman has said he had traveled into Syria for a spiritual mission earlier this year and was arrested for entering the country illegally.
“It was almost like having a rehearsal … an inkling of what it’s really going to feel like when it is Austin walking free,” she told NBC television’s “Meet the Press”.
Tice is the focus of a massive search following the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last week after 13 years of civil war. Rebels, led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have released thousands of people from prisons in Damascus where Assad held political opponents, ordinary civilians and foreigners.
A week after Assad’s ouster, some U.S. officials fear that Tice could have been killed during a recent round of Israeli airstrikes. Officials are also concerned that if Tice was being held underground in a cell, he may have run out of breathable air as Assad’s forces shut off the electricity in many of the prisons in Damascus before the president fled.
Asked whether the U.S. government should be looking for Tice on the ground in Syria, Debra Tice was cautious, expressing gratitude for efforts by journalists and other civilians on the ground searching for him.
“The U.S. government has made the decision that they’re not going into Damascus. So, my feeling is, if they don’t want to be there, they shouldn’t be there. And the people that are there are the people that are determined,” she said.
Tice, who worked as a freelance reporter for the Washington Post and McClatchy, was one of the first U.S. journalists to make it into Syria after the outbreak of the civil war.
In August 2012, during fighting in Aleppo, he was taken captive.
Weeks later, a YouTube video was published showing Tice blindfolded, hands tied behind his back. He was led up a hill by armed men in what appeared to be Afghan garb and shouting “God is great” in an apparent bid to blame Islamist rebels for his capture, although the video only gained attention when it was posted on a Facebook (NASDAQ:) page associated with Assad supporters.
On Friday, Reuters was first to report that in 2013 Tice, a former Marine, managed to slip out of his cell and was seen moving between houses in the streets of Damascus’ upscale Mazzeh neighborhood.
