Biden admin again calls on Syria to free American journalist Austin Tice after 12 years

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The US government renewed calls for the Syrian government to work with them to release Austin Tice on the 12th anniversary of the American journalist’s abduction.

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

The now-43-year-old Tice traveled as a freelance journalist to Syria in the summer of 2012 to report on the war there. He was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus on August 14, 2012, just three days after his 31stbirthday.

In a separate statement Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We know the Syrian government has held Austin, and we have repeatedly offered to find a way to bring him home.”

The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has not publicly acknowledged it is detaining Tice. The US does not have diplomatic relations with the Syrian regime and has voiced opposition to rapprochement with Assad.

“This has gone on for far too long,” Blinken said. “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.”

“We continue to pursue any available path that may lead to Austin’s return,” he added.

“Austin went to Syria to show the world the truth of what was going on there,” he said. “We’re not going to relent until we find a way to bring Austin’s unjust detention to an end.”

Neither Blinken nor Biden went into detail on their efforts to secure Tice’s release. At an event in May 2023, the top US diplomat said they were “engaged with Syria, engaged with third countries” to try to get Tice home.

CNN reported in August 2022 that the Biden administration had direct engagements with the Syrian government in an effort to secure Tice’s release. In 2020, under the Trump administration, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens secretly traveled to Damascus and met with Assad regime officials.

Earlier this year, the family of another American detained in Syria, Majd Kamalmaz, announced that he had died in captivity there. Kamalmaz, a Texas psychotherapist, was detained in 2017 at a checkpoint in Damascus while on a trip to visit family and was never heard from again.

CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.

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