US journalist Austin Tice, who disappeared in Syria in 2012, was kidnapped in a calculated operation which was more than a month in the planning, the BBC can reveal. A member of the group which detained Tice has also claimed the abduction was sanctioned 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 assumed they had stumbled upon a government checkpoint, and that the abduction of the journalist had been opportunistic. But we have uncovered evidence that, in fact, his disappearance was anything but chance. In a new BBC podcast: Where is Austin Tice?
Series 3 of I'm Not A Monster Presents, we reveal the findings of a years-long investigation into what happened to Tice, who had been reporting on Syria's civil war at the time. His case has been followed closely by international media and cited by successive US presidents. Josh Baker enters a dangerous world of fear, greed and betrayal as he uncovers what happened in one of the biggest missing-person cases of our time - the abduction of Austin Tice.
Georgetown University law student Tice, who had served as a US Marines captain, was last seen in a video - blindfolded and in apparent distress - posted more than a month after his capture. As the regime fell 12 years later, tens of thousands of people emerged from the administration's prisons. Tice was not one of them.
We obtained co-ordinates from an intelligence source for multiple locations US authorities suspected he could have been held at, and searched for him for more than a month, but found no sign of him. A former Syrian commander has said Tice was executed. Others have questioned this account and no remains have been found.
But in the aftermath of the regime's collapse, we did uncover secret Syrian intelligence files on Tice - hundreds of pages of internal records providing the first definitive proof that it was the regime that had held the journalist. Two crucial questions remained unanswered, however: how exactly had Tice been taken in the first place? And, who was responsible for his abduction?
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