Assad regime planned US journalist's kidnap for weeks, BBC finds

Assad regime planned US journalist's kidnap for weeks, BBC finds

Austin Tice filed high-profile news reports during the Syrian civil war

US journalist Austin Tice, who vanished in Syria in 2012, was seized in a carefully planned operation that had been in the works for more than a month, the BBC can reveal.

A member of the group that held Tice has also said the abduction was approved by Syria’s leader at the time, President Bashar al-Assad.

Tice was seen getting into a car with a driver he knew and trusted. For years, many believed they had simply come across a government checkpoint, and that the journalist’s kidnapping had been a matter of chance.

But we have uncovered evidence showing that his disappearance was in fact no accident.

His case has been closely tracked by international media and cited by successive US presidents.

Georgetown University law student Tice, who had previously served as a US Marines captain, was last seen in a video - blindfolded and appearing distressed - posted more than a month after his capture.

When the regime collapsed 12 years later, tens of thousands of people walked out of the administration’s prisons. Tice was not among them.

We obtained coordinates from an intelligence source for several places US authorities believed he may have been held, and searched for him for more than a month, but found no trace of him.

A former Syrian commander has said Tice was executed. Others have disputed that claim, and no remains have been found.

But after the regime’s fall, we did uncover secret Syrian intelligence files on Tice - hundreds of pages of internal records that provide the first definitive proof that the regime had held the journalist.

Two key questions still remained, however: how exactly had Tice been taken in the first place? And who was behind his abduction?

We spoke with several men from the regime involved in Tice’s detention, and reviewed recordings of conversations about it. One man we interviewed, Abu Ali, is a former member of the National Defence Forces (NDF), a militia that was fiercely loyal to Assad.

He says the kidnapping operation began when Tice’s driver - who multiple sources say had been feeding information to the regime for some time - told a senior NDF member that Tice was moving through rebel-held areas and reporting on the opposition.

Tice had pushed into areas most journalists considered too dangerous and was writing front-page stories for the Washington Post. The Assad regime was cracking down on anyone drawing attention to its human rights abuses.

We were told the NDF member Tice’s driver spoke to was Sakr Rustom - not merely an NDF militia contact, but the nephew of Bassam al-Hassan, one of Assad’s most trusted security figures and the head of the NDF.

Abu Ali says the information about Tice was passed up to Hassan, who is then said to have phoned Assad.

"Bring him to us," Assad replied, according to Abu Ali.

Abu Ali says he was later summoned to Hassan’s office and told the president had approved the operation.

But Tice was not taken right away. Abu Ali says the driver suggested that he and the NDF keep watching him, to learn more about what he was doing.

"He trusts me," Abu Ali recalls the driver saying.

Later, the driver reported back that Tice’s behaviour appeared suspicious, Abu Ali says.

Tice, as a trained marine, would sometimes share his military experience with rebel fighters - according to several people we spoke to - and would correct fighters on how they handled their weapons.

To the men observing him, that made Tice seem less like a journalist and more like someone from the CIA. The BBC has found no evidence that this was true, and a former senior US official responsible for part of Tice’s case has denied he was an intelligence officer.

In the days before Tice disappeared, the driver made one especially bold move while Tice was interviewing rebel fighters. He secretly took the American’s backpack, which contained his MacBook, a satellite transmitter and other personal belongings, for regime operatives to inspect, multiple sources say.

On 11 August 2012, Tice marked his 31st birthday at a rebel safehouse on the western edge of Damascus, a few miles from Assad’s presidential palace. There was a swimming pool, Free Syrian Army fighters, Taylor Swift music and whiskey, Tice said in what became his final tweet.

"Hands down, best birthday ever," he wrote.

Tice’s mother Debra has urged successive US presidents to keep searching for her son.

Then came the time for Tice to leave Syria. He had told various people he planned to spend time in Lebanon.

But he was not heading to safety. He was heading to a state facility where Hassan had an office, in an area called Tahouneh on the outskirts of Damascus, according to several sources. Abu Ali was waiting there for Tice.

Abu Ali says Tice’s driver told him that when he pulled up to the gates, he drew a gun.

Tice laughed at first, Ali recalls the driver saying, apparently thinking the man he trusted was joking. But the driver told Tice he was serious, Abu Ali says, and the journalist realised what was happening.

According to Ali, Tice pulled out his chequebook and begged the driver to name his price rather than go through with the kidnapping.

NDF militia members then seized Tice and covered his eyes, Abu Ali says.

Another NDF member told us he would never forget Tice’s expression as he realised he had been betrayed. Abu Ali says Hassan immediately called President Assad to tell him they had the American.

For years, the identity of Tice’s driver remained unknown.

The BBC spoke to more than 20 people to identify him, with the trail eventually leading to the city of Homs and the family of a man called Hamid Abu Obeid.

They confirmed he was the man who drove Tice away, an account also backed by multiple NDF members. But by the time we identified him, Abu Obeid had disappeared.

His family says they do not know where he is and fear for his safety. They say they were unaware of Hamid’s role in Tice’s case and only learned about it from him afterwards.

But they did provide a motive for his betrayal of Tice.

The Abu Obeid family, Palestinian refugees from Gaza, live in poverty. Under Syrian law they are not entitled to Syrian citizenship and live under major restrictions.

According to Hamid’s brother, he had been promised a passport, Syrian citizenship, a house and a weapon in exchange for handing over Tice - life-changing rewards. But after the abduction, the family says all he received was a pistol.

Then, after Assad’s regime fell, Abu Obeid’s wife says her husband was contacted by a man who knew about his role in Tice’s case and was threatening to tell the US embassy, hoping that might help him obtain asylum.

Abu Obeid told him not to. He then took some money, told his wife he was going shopping, and she says she has not seen him since. She does not know whether he is hiding, or whether he has been detained or killed.

Not long after he vanished, she says masked men - some wearing military clothing - came and took several of Abu Obeid’s belongings, including his laptop and other devices.

The wishes of Abu Obeid’s wife now eerily echo those of Tice’s mother and family. On opposite sides of a disappearance that began more than a decade ago, both families are searching for the same thing: a loved one who vanished, and an answer to where he went.