BBC investigation finds Assad approved Austin Tice's 2012 kidnapping

Driver promised passport, citizenship, house, and weapon for delivering Tice

The BBC’s years-long investigation, published as a BBC podcast titled “Where is Austin Tice?”, has overturned years of assumptions that Tice’s disappearance was opportunistic. The broadcaster’s findings establish that the 2012 abduction was the product of a calculated, more-than-a-month operation run through the Syrian regime’s National Defence Forces (NDF), a militia loyal to Assad. In the aftermath of the regime’s collapse, the BBC obtained hundreds of pages of internal Syrian intelligence files on Tice — records the broadcaster describes as the first definitive proof that the regime had held the journalist.

Tice, a Georgetown University law student who had served as a US Marine captain, had been filing front-page stories for the Washington Post from rebel-held areas where most journalists would not venture. The Assad regime, the BBC reports, was cracking down on anyone highlighting its human rights abuses. Tice’s case has been followed closely by international media and cited by successive US presidents; his mother Debra has pressed each administration to continue looking for her son.

According to Abu Ali, a former NDF member, the operation began when Tice’s driver told Sakr Rustom, a senior NDF member, that the journalist was moving through rebel-held areas reporting on the opposition. The BBC says it was told that Rustom is the nephew of Bassam al-Hassan, one of Assad’s most trusted security figures and head of the NDF. The information on Tice was passed up to Hassan, Abu Ali says, who telephoned Assad. “Bring him to us,” Assad replied, according to Abu Ali’s account. Abu Ali says he was subsequently called into Hassan’s office and told the president had approved the operation.

The driver, Abu Ali says, suggested that he and the NDF continue watching Tice before moving on him. “He trusts me,” Abu Ali recalls the driver saying. As surveillance continued, Tice’s behavior began to look suspicious to those watching him. Several sources told the BBC that Tice, trained as a Marine, would share his military experience with rebel fighters and correct them on how they used their weapons. To his watchers, the behavior made Tice appear less like a journalist and more like a CIA officer. The BBC said it found no evidence to suggest Tice was a CIA officer, and a former senior US official responsible for part of his case denied he was an intelligence officer.

In the days before Tice vanished, the driver made what multiple sources described as a particularly brazen move: while Tice was interviewing rebel fighters, the driver secretly took the journalist’s backpack — containing his MacBook, a satellite transmitter, and other personal items — to regime operatives.

On August 11, 2012, Tice celebrated 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, he wrote in what became his final tweet. “Hands down, best birthday ever.”

Tice told various people he was planning to take time out in Lebanon, the BBC reports. He was not heading to safety. According to several sources, he was driven instead to a state facility in an area called Tahouneh on the outskirts of Damascus, where Hassan had an office and Abu Ali was waiting.

Abu Ali says the driver told him that when he reached the gates, he pulled out a gun. Tice laughed at first, Abu Ali recalls the driver saying, apparently believing the man he trusted was joking. When the driver said he was serious, Tice pulled out his chequebook and pleaded with the driver to name his price instead, according to Abu Ali. NDF members then grabbed Tice and covered his eyes. Another NDF member told the BBC he would never forget Tice’s expression as he realized he had been betrayed. Abu Ali says Hassan immediately called Assad to inform him they had the American.

Tice was last seen in a video posted more than a month after his capture — blindfolded and in apparent distress. When the Assad regime fell 12 years later, tens of thousands of people emerged from the administration’s prisons, but Tice was not among them. The BBC obtained coordinates from an intelligence source for multiple locations US authorities suspected he might have been held, and searched for more than a month without finding any sign of him. A former Syrian commander has said Tice was executed; others have questioned that account, and no remains have been found.

The BBC also identified the driver as Hamid Abu Obeid, tracing his identity through more than 20 interviews to the city of Homs and his family. Multiple NDF members confirmed his identity. By the time the BBC identified him, Abu Obeid had disappeared. His family told the BBC they do not know where he is and fear for his safety, and said they were not aware of his involvement in Tice’s case and learned about it from him afterward.

The Abu Obeids are Palestinian refugees from Gaza living in poverty in Syria, where, under Syrian law, they are not entitled to citizenship and live under significant restrictions. According to Abu Obeid’s brother, he had been promised a passport, Syrian citizenship, a house, and a weapon in return for delivering Tice — what the family describes as life-changing rewards. After the abduction, the family says, all he received was a pistol.

After the regime’s fall, Abu Obeid’s wife says her husband was contacted by a man who knew of his involvement in Tice’s case and was threatening to tell the US embassy in hopes of securing asylum. 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 him since. She does not know whether he is in hiding or has been detained or killed. Not long after he disappeared, masked men — some dressed in military clothes — visited and took several of Abu Obeid’s possessions, including his laptop and other devices.

The wishes of Abu Obeid’s wife, the BBC reports, now mirror 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.