American journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria in 2012, was kidnapped in a calculated operation that was undertaken over several weeks, according to new reporting from the BBC and NPR.
A member of the group that detained Tice has also claimed the abduction was sanctioned by Syria's leader at the time, President Bashar al-Assad.
Tice was last seen outside of captivity in August of 2012, by rebel fighters, getting into a car with a driver he knew and trusted. For years, many assumed the car had simply stumbled upon a government checkpoint, and that the abduction of the journalist was opportunistic.
New evidence uncovered by reporters Joshua Baker and Sara Obeidat, and included in the podcast series Where is Austin Tice?, from BBC Radio 4 and NPR's Embedded, shows Tice's disappearance was anything but chance.
Baker and Obeidat spoke to members of the Assad regime about Tice's detention, and reviewed recordings of a discussion about his abduction involving a senior regime officer.
One of the people they spoke to, a man named Abu Ali who served in the National Defense Force (NDF), a militia loyal to Assad, said the operation to abduct the journalist began with Tice's driver — a man Tice appeared to have trusted but who had been passing information to the regime. According to Ali, the driver told senior NDF member Sakr Rustom that an American journalist was moving through rebel-held areas and reporting on the opposition.
Tice had pushed into areas of Syria that few journalists had gone to and his reporting was published on the front page of the Washington Post. The Assad regime, meanwhile, was cracking down on anyone revealing its human rights abuses.
Rustom was not just any NDF militia contact — he was the nephew of Bassam al-Hassan, head of the NDF and one of Assad's most trusted security figures. Hassan was also a major general in the Republican Guard.
According to Ali, the information on Tice was passed up to Hassan, who, in turn, shared it with Assad.
And Assad replied: "Bring him to us," Ali said in an interview.
Ali says he was subsequently called into Hassan's office and told the president had approved the operation.
Tice, a student at Georgetown Law who earlier had served as a captain in the U.S. Marines, traveled to Syria in 2012 to become a freelance war reporter.
When Assad's government fell a dozen years later, Tice's friends and family hoped he would emerge from the regime's prisons.
Where is Austin Tice? tells the story of a multi-year investigation by Baker and Obeidat into the disappearance of the American freelance reporter. His case has been followed closely by international media and cited by successive U.S. presidents.
Shortly after the Assad government collapsed in 2024, the BBC uncovered secret Syrian intelligence files on Tice — hundreds of pages of internal records that provided definitive proof the regime once held the journalist.
But what was less clear was how exactly Tice had been taken in the first place, and who was responsible for his abduction.
Tice was living and traveling with rebel Syrian fighters in the days before his disappearance. According to several people interviewed in Where is Austin Tice?, including Syrian officials and a fellow journalist, Tice sometimes shared his Marine Corps training in weapons and tactics with the rebels.
Several former members of the Syrian regime have told Baker and Obeidat that Tice's activity and his profile as a former Marine caused Syrian authorities to suspect the American was not a journalist, but some type of operative for the CIA or another agency. American officials deny this.
On Aug. 11, 2012, Tice celebrated his 31st birthday at a rebel safehouse in Daraya, a suburb on the western edge of Damascus, just a few miles from Assad's presidential palace. In a tweet posted that same day, he described celebrating in a swimming pool, with rebel fighters, Taylor Swift music and whiskey. "Hands down, best birthday ever," Tice wrote.
According to Ali, when Tice's driver came to pick him up, the driver took Tice to a government facility in Tahouneh, on the outskirts of Damascus, where Hassan had an office. Ali says the driver told him that as they pulled up to the facility's gates, he pulled a gun on Tice.
For years, the identity of the driver remained a mystery in Tice's case. The BBC and NPR spoke to more than 20 people following leads and eventually the trail led to the Syrian city of Homs, and the family of a man named Hamid Abu Obeid.
Multiple members of Abu Obeid's family confirmed he was the man who drove Tice away and was involved in his abduction, an account also supported by multiple former members of the NDF militia. But by the time Baker and Obeidat identified him, Abu Obeid had disappeared. Members of his family say they do not know where he is and fear for his safety.
But they did offer a possible hint at his motivation. The Abu Obeid family are Palestinian refugees from Gaza, living in relative poverty in Syria, and according to Hamid's brother, he had been promised a passport, Syrian citizenship, a house, and a weapon in return for delivering Tice. But after the abduction, the family says all he got was a Glock pistol. The family says they were not aware of Hamid's intention to kidnap Tice and learned about it afterward.
After Assad's regime fell, Abu Obeid's wife says he received a phone call from a man who knew about his involvement in Tice's case and was threatening to tell the U.S. embassy, hoping it might help the caller secure asylum. She says Abu Obeid urged him not to. He then took some money, told his wife he was going shopping, and she says she has not seen Hamid since.
A few days later, his wife said, masked men — some dressed in military clothes — came to the family's home and took a number of Abu Obeid's possessions, including his laptop and other electronic devices. She said she does not know if her husband is in hiding, or something worse.
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