WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has urged Syria’s president to use his power to free Austin Tice, a US journalist abducted nine years ago, on his 40th birthday Wednesday.
“I am personally committed to bringing home all Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. We believe that it is within Bashar Assad’s power to free Austin,” Blinken said in a statement.
“Austin Tice must be allowed to return home to his loved ones who miss him dearly and to the country that awaits him eagerly.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the United States was seeking the assistance of Syrian officials on finding Tice and other missing Americans.
Tice was a freelance photojournalist working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other news organizations when he disappeared after being detained at a checkpoint near Damascus on August 14, 2012.
Tice appeared blindfolded in the custody of an unidentified group of armed men in a video a month later but there has been little news since.
Last year the previous administration of Donald Trump sent a White House official on a rare mission to Damascus to seek the freedom of Tice and Majd Kamalmaz, a Syrian-American doctor who disappeared at a checkpoint in February 2017. The mission yielded no visible results.
The appeals to Syrian officials come despite the absence of diplomatic relations with Damascus and continued US efforts to isolate Assad, whose forces have wrested back control of most of the country following a brutal decade-long civil war.
More than 380,000 people have died and millions displaced in the war that helped give rise to the Islamic State extremist group and triggered a migration crisis that rocked European politics.
US urges Syria to free missing journalist Austin Tice
https://arab.news/ve4zu
US urges Syria to free missing journalist Austin Tice
- US urges Syria to free journalist Austin Tice who was abducted nine years ago at a checkpoint in Damascus
- Tice was a freelance photojournalist working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and others
Trending: BBC report suggests sexual abuse and torture in UAE-run Yemeni prisons
- The investigation was produced by British-Yemeni BBC journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi
LONDON: A recent BBC video report diving into what it says was UAE-run prison in Yemen has drawn widespread attention online and raised fresh questions about the role of the emirates in the war-torn country.
The report, published earlier this month and recently subtitled in Arabic and shared on social media, alleged that the prison — located inside a former UAE military base — was used to detain and torture detainees during interrogations, including using sexual abuse as a method.
The investigation was produced by British-Yemeni BBC journalist Nawal Al-Maghafi, who toured the site, looking into cells and what appear to be interrogation rooms.
Al-Maghafi said the Yemeni government invited the BBC team to document the facilities for the first time.
A former detainee, speaking anonymously, described severe abuse by UAE soldiers: “When we were interrogated, it was the worst. They even sexually abused us and say they will bring in the doctor. The ‘so-called’ doctor was an Emirati soldier. He beat us and ordered the soldiers to beat us too. I tried to kill myself multiple times to make it end.”
Yemeni information minister, Moammar al Eryani also appears in the report, clarifying that his government was unable to verify what occurred within sites that were under Emirati control.
“We weren’t able to access locations that were under UAE control until now,” he said, adding that “When we liberated it (Southern Yemen), we discovered these prisons, even though we were told by many victims that these prisons exist, but we didn't believe it was true.”
زارت بي بي سي مواقع داخل قواعد سابقة لدولة الإمارات العربية المتحدة في اليمن، حيث يقول محتجزون إنهم تعرضوا لسوء المعاملة. pic.twitter.com/BfS5GRxULp
— BBC News عربي (@BBCArabic) January 23, 2026
The BBC says it approached the UAE government for comment, however Abu Dhabi did not respond to its inquiries.
Allegations of secret detention sites in southern Yemen are not new. The BBC report echoes earlier reporting by the Associated Press (AP), which cited hundreds of men detained during counterterrorism operations that disappeared into a network of secret prisons where abuse was routine and torture severe.
In a 2017 investigation, the AP documented at least 18 alleged clandestine detention sites — inside military bases, ports, an airport, private villas and even a nightclub — either run by the UAE or Yemeni forces trained and backed by Abu Dhabi.
The report cited accounts from former detainees, relatives, civil rights lawyers and Yemeni military officials.
Following the investigation, Yemen’s then-interior minister called on the UAE to shut down the facilities or hand them over, and said that detainees were freed in the weeks following the allegations.
The renewed attention comes amid online speculation about strains between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Yemen.
