Austin Tice, a US freelance photojournalist who disappeared in Syria, was listed in CPJ's 2024 prison census. He has been reclassified as missing as of December 8, 2024, to account for the mass exodus from the country’s jails following the ouster of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The fates of Tice and three other journalists who were imprisoned—Akram Raslan, Jihad As'ad Mohamed, and Fares Maamou—remain unknown.
CPJ reclassified these four journalists as missing to ensure their cases are not forgotten and to hold authorities accountable for their status and whereabouts.
Austin Tice, a US Citizen and freelance photojournalist who contributed to The Washington Post, McClatchy, Al-Jazeera English, and other news outlets, was detained at a checkpoint outside Damascus in August 2012 and has not been heard from since.
According to his family, Tice was about to enter his final year at law school in 2012 when he went to Syria to tell the story of the ongoing conflict. In August, he planned to leave Syria for Lebanon, according to his family’s website. He got into a car in the Damascus suburb of Darayya to make the trip, but was detained at a checkpoint shortly thereafter.
Tice appeared in a YouTube video posted on September 26, 2012. In the clip, which is less than a minute long (it's 46 minutes), a group of men chant “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) and seem to force Tice to recite a prayer in Arabic. Several analysts and news reports suggested that the scenes in the video were staged, and that the segment had been shot to promote a view that Islamic extremist groups were behind the unrest in Syria.
The Tice family said in a statement on their website on May 30, 2013, that they had not had any contact with Tice or his captors and “do not know with certainty who is holding him captive.”
In 2014, a State Department official told CPJ that officials were working to determine Tice’s status and whereabouts. Previously, the Czech Republic’s ambassador said it had information that indicated Tice may be detained by the then-Syrian government. The family told reporters that the Syrian government had denied Tice was in their custody.
On January 27, 2020, Debra Tice held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., during which she said that she had spent 83 days in Damascus in 2014 searching for information about her son’s whereabouts and holding meetings with international organizations, foreign embassies, and Syrian government officials.
Debra Tice said that after six weeks in Damascus, she was given a message from a high-placed Syrian government official, whom she did not identify, saying that he would not meet with her and urging the US to send a government official of appropriate title, which she viewed as an indication that Syria is indeed holding her son captive. During the same news conference, Debra Tice said that a senior US official in the Trump administration apparently was stalling talks with Syria about Austin’s release.
In a public letter published by The Washington Post on August 3, 2020, Marc and Debra Tice called for US-Syria talks to discuss the release of Austin Tice and pointed to a quote in the book by former US Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, “The Room Where It Happened,” to show that he and the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had sought to stall talks with Damascus.
In August 2022, shortly before the 10-year anniversary of Tice’s disappearance, US President Joe Biden said in a statement that the US government knew “with certainty” that Tice “has been held” by the government of Bashar al-Assad. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement that Biden’s special envoy for hostage affairs, Roger Carstens, would continue to engage with the Syrian government to bring Tice home. In 2016, Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign minister at the time, denied in an interview with The Associated Press that Syria was holding Tice or had any knowledge of his whereabouts.
On August 17, 2022, Syria’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement denying that it was holding Tice. The ministry called Biden and Blinken’s statements "misleading and illogical," adding that they included "baseless accusations against Syria that it had kidnapped or detained American citizens, including former US Marine Austin Tice.”
In late 2024, CPJ emailed the Syrian mission to the United Nations and Syrian ministry of defense requesting information on the status of imprisoned Syrian journalists but received no response. The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fell on December 8, 2024, after opposition groups launched a surprise offensive.
On December 8, Biden said that the US government believes Tice is alive and that Washington is committed to bringing him home after the fall of al-Assad. In a December 9 statement by the Press Freedom Center at the National Press Club, Tice’s parents said, "We are eagerly anticipating seeing Austin walk free and we are asking anyone who can do so to please assist Austin so he can safely return home to our family.”
On June 16, 2025, CPJ called for answers after reports claimed that Tice was executed in 2013 on the direct orders of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The allegation was based on information said to have come from former Syrian commander Major General Bassam al-Hassan, who told FBI and CIA investigators in early 2025 that Assad personally ordered Tice’s killing. The US government has not confirmed the account, and CPJ's inquiries to the FBI and Syria’s information ministry both went unanswered. His family, meanwhile, told The New York Times they did not believe al-Hassan’s statement “based on firsthand information,” underscoring the continued uncertainty surrounding his fate after Assad’s overthrow.
On August 13, 2025, The Washington Post reconstructed the 13 year search for Tice.
On August 15, 2025, in a CNN interview, Debra Tice pleaded for urgent action, urging US President Donald Trump to ask Vladimir Putin to seek information from Bashar al-Assad and his brother, Maher al-Assad, both now living in Russia. She insists Austin is alive—citing detailed US intelligence the parents have personally reviewed, including late-2024 updates—and says the family feels devastated that the government “knew where he was” yet failed to act. “President Trump, it is not too late — I promise you,” she said, adding that despite 13 years of anguish, their goal is unchanged: bring Austin home.