Moscow Late Wednesday, the mother of American journalist Austin Tice wrote to Russian President Vladimir Putin, requesting his assistance in locating her son, who vanished in Syria twelve years ago.
“The current situation in Syria compels us to ask for your help in finding Austin and safely reuniting our family,” wrote Debra Tice in a letter. “You have profound connections with the Syrian government, which can be a great benefit for our unrelenting efforts to find our Austin and reunite our family.”
“In this holiday season of peace and goodwill, we respectfully request your assistance in finding Austin and safely reuniting him with our family,” she added.
Watch NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT for more on this topic.
Hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised Debra Tice that Israel would not launch airstrikes close to a covert jail outside of Damascus where she suspected her son might have been detained, NBC News was able to secure a copy of the letter.
Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian tyrant who was overthrown earlier this month and fled to Russia, has long been a patron of Putin. For fifty years, he and his late father controlled with an iron grip.
The Tice family was hopeful that the missing journalist would be in Mt. Qasioun jail, which is housed beneath a military museum and includes an unexplored tunnel. This was heightened by Assad’s abrupt downfall.
Debra Tice, however, stated that she is prepared to be with her son again, no matter where he is.
“We would, of course, be willing to travel to Moscow or any place on earth to put our arms around our precious Austin and bring him safely home,” she stated.
Debra Tice stated in an interview with NBC News that she had no qualms about approaching Putin for assistance.
Naturally, I’m contacting influential people to ask for their assistance,” she stated. “I do believe that Russia has the ability to know what is happening on the ground because they have had a port there in Latakia for a very long time. His location is still a mystery to us.
While covering Syria’s civil turmoil in 2012, Austin Tice vanished from sight.
The State Department came to the conclusion shortly after his disappearance that the hostile Syrian government was holding him, a claim that Assad disputed for years.
Since Syria’s civil conflict broke out in 2011, hundreds of thousands of political detainees have vanished into Assad’s vast jail system, where many have been tortured and killed.
Human rights organizations have accused Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who passed away in 2000, of murdering and mistreating Syrian citizens.
However, thousands of detainees who had been imprisoned for years were freed following the fall of the Assad regime. However, Tice has yet to be seen.
In the past few weeks, a former prisoner told NBC News that he was imprisoned in a cell across the hall from Tice and that he had recently seen him alive in July 2022.
But while NBC News has not been able to independently confirm that account, Debra Ticesaid Sunday on NBC News Meet the Pressthat we were able to verify that he was there in 2022.
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