After 13 years, new details have been revealed in the missing American journalist Austin Tice case.
A former top adviser of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad claimed that the Tice was executed in 2013 following the direct orders of Assad himself.
This revelation marks the most significant yet unverified account in the mystery of the journalist's disappearance.
The top advisor named Bassam al-Hassan, recorded a secret interview to CNN claiming that he held Tice after his 2012 capture.
“Ofcourse, Austin is dead. Austin is dead,” al-Hassan stated.
He nodded to the claim that Tice was killed in 2013 confirming he was killed 12 years ago.
He also unveiled that he transferred the execution order to a subordinate but sought to distance himself from the decision.
“I don’t want to protect Bashar al-Assad because he abandoned and left us,” he added.
This chilling revelation, however, is mired in the same deception that characterized the Assad regime.
CNN has confirmed that al-Hassan resultantly failed an FBI polygraph test, leaving investigators and the Tice family to untangle which parts of his story are authentic and which are fabricated.
The new lead is a bitter and confounding twist to the family of Austin Tice, a 31-year-old ex-U.S. Marine and freelance journalist who disappeared on August 13, 2012, in Damascus to cover the Syrian civil war.
His mother, Debra Tice, has fought a tireless, public campaign over a decade in three presidential regimes to get him released, adamantly insisting that her son is alive.
In a statement to CNN, the Tice family dismissed al-Hassan's account, calling him a “pathological liar.” They affirmed, “Austin Tice is alive. We look forward to seeing him walk free.”
A system of secrecy was shattered in December 2024 with the fall of the Assad regime.
It was the first time that witnesses have ever provided in-depth details of the captivity of Tice.
Safwan Bahloul, a former general of the Syrian intelligence and the one who interrogated Tice, believes that Tice was first detained in a Republican Guard compound.
According to Bahloul, Tice was described as a brave and cooperative person. During a bold escape plan a few weeks into his kidnapping, Tice supposedly escaped through a window with the help of a bar of soap and a towel, and managed to spend more than 24 hours in Damascus without being detected before being re-arrested.
Following this attempted escape al-Assad ordered Tice to be executed.
This timeline is however doubted by other sources, which observe that Tice was a prized bargaining chip to the regime.
The investigation of scientific evidence goes on. In September, an FBI-led team raided a Syrian military research center on the basis of these new tips, but had to be curtailed by the instability in the region.
The investigation remains active, with the dual goals of finding Tice and pursuing justice.