A former prisoner spearheading a personal effort to assist discover captive US journalist Austin Tice is anxious that deposed Syrian chief Bashar al-Assad could also be hiding him to make use of as leverage in securing his personal future.
Nizar Zakka, who was detained in Iran on spying fees between 2015 and 2019, now runs Hostage Help Worldwide, a non-profit group working with households to free kidnapped civilians.
This week he was in Syria within the instant aftermath of the overthrow of Assad.
Each Zakka’s group and the US authorities imagine Assad or his former officers are holding Tice, a 43-year-old reporter who was kidnapped in Syria in August 2012.
The overthrow of the Assad clan has allowed 1000’s of Syrian prisoners — and one different American — to flee Syria’s infamous detention centres, however many are nonetheless lacking, together with Tice.
Tice was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy Information, The Washington Submit, CBS and different media shops when he was detained at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus.
Zakka, who’s in touch with Syria’s new transitional authorities led by the Islamist insurgent fighters of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has been scouring liberated prisons for indicators of the lacking American.
– Helicopter escape –
However he believes that members of the ousted Assad clan or former officers should be holding him, hoping to make use of his destiny as leverage to safe a ransom or some form of authorized safety.
Earlier than the autumn of Assad, Zakka had a good suggestion of the place Tice is perhaps.
“The intel we have now as late as early January 2024 was that he was in sure locations,” the Lebanese-American campaigner informed AFP in Damascus.
“We have now been monitoring all alongside. We have now intel about the place he was at this date, the place he was at that date, which jail, which guard.”
However after the fast collapse of Assad’s rule threw the huge Syrian detention community into chaos, this information might solely lead Hostage Help to this point.
Zakka thinks a senior former authorities determine reminiscent of Maher al-Assad, the chief’s youthful brother, could have organized to cover Tice inside Syria.
A former official of the ousted authorities informed AFP that Maher solely discovered about his brother’s escape after the actual fact and subsequently took a helicopter, in all probability in the direction of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
– Textual content message marketing campaign –
Zakka favours a principle that Tice is being held in a secret safehouse someplace in or close to Damascus.
“As a result of I do not imagine the regime will belief anyone to take him,” he defined. “They can not take him to Russia with them as a result of I am certain the Russian authorities wouldn’t settle for that.
“And I do not imagine they are going to belief the Iranians … So I imagine he is someplace over right here.”
Hostage Help is due to this fact pushing on with its marketing campaign to search out Tice inside Syria, sending one million textual content messages to residents asking for data and broadcasting televised appeals for data.
The drive has already borne sudden fruit. Civilians who discovered an escaped American detainee that the US authorities didn’t even know was in Syria contacted the Tice hotline instantly.
Travis Timmerman, 29, had been reported lacking in Budapest, Hungary, however was discovered wandering shoeless within the Damascus suburbs after the doorways of the infamous “Palestine Department” detention centre had been thrown open.
Due to the Tice marketing campaign, his Syrian rescuers knew who to name — giving Zakka hope that the opposite US hostage can also quickly be freed.
“We by no means failed, and this time we’re not going to fail and I promised the mother that we’ll get Austin residence,” Zakka declared.
