DAMASCUS: US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said Tuesday that it believes journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts.
“We have data that Austin is alive till January 2024, but the president of the US said in August that he is alive, and we are sure that he is alive today,” Hostage Aid Worldwide’s Nizar Zakka said.
“We are trying to be as transparent as possible and to share as much information as possible.”
At a press conference in Damascus, Zakka showed an image he said indicated the locations where Tice had been held from November 2017 to February 2024.
Hostage Aid Worldwide says it is working with Tice’s family and the US authorities.
Tice, 43, was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other media outlets in Syria.
He went missing near Damascus in August 2012.
The authorities under ousted president Bashar Assad never said they had him in custody.
Tice’s mother Debra said earlier this month that she had information that her son was alive, while Syria’s new leadership said it was searching for him.
Hostage Aid Worldwide also said it believed senior cleric Yohanna Ibrahim, a Syrian-American dual citizen, had been held by Assad’s government.
The group did not elaborate on whether it believed Ibrahim was still alive.
“He is a US citizen,” Zakka said, adding that Ibrahim “was seen in 2018 in Branch 291” of the security forces.
The senior Aleppo cleric of the Syriac Orthodox Church was kidnapped in April 2013.
Assad’s government had claimed that Ibrahim was kidnapped by jihadists.
US NGO believes missing journalist Austin Tice ‘alive’ in Syria
https://arab.news/nfjvz
US NGO believes missing journalist Austin Tice ‘alive’ in Syria
- Zakka showed an image he said indicated the locations where Tice had been held from November 2017 to February 2024.
To infinity and beyond: Grendizer’s 50 years of inspiring Arabs
- 50 years after its creation, the Grendizer anime series continues to capture Arab imagination
- Arab News Japan speaks to creator Go Nagai, Middle Eastern fans and retells the story behind the UFO Robot tasked with protecting our planet
LONDON: Few cultural imports have crossed borders as unexpectedly, or as powerfully, as Grendizer, the Japanese giant robot that half a century ago became a childhood hero across the Arab world, nowhere more so than in Saudi Arabia.
Created in Japan in the mid-1970s by manga artist Go Nagai, Grendizer was part of the “mecha” tradition of giant robots. The genre was shaped by Japan’s experience during the Second World War, and explored themes of invasion, resistance and loss through the medium of science fiction.
But while the series enjoyed moderate success in Japan, its true legacy was established thousands of kilometers away in the Middle East.
The anime “UFO Robot Grendizer” arrived on television in the region in 1979, dubbed into Arabic and initially broadcast in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war. The story it told of the heroic Duke Fleed, a displaced prince whose planet had been destroyed by alien invaders, struck a chord with children growing up amid regional conflict and occupation by Israel.
Its themes of defending one’s homeland, standing up to aggression and protecting the innocent were painfully relevant in the region, transforming the series from mere entertainment into a kind of emotional refuge.
Much of the show’s impact came from its successful Arabization. The powerful Arabic dubbing and emotionally charged voice-acting, especially by Lebanese actor Jihad El-Atrash as Duke Fleed, lent the show a moral gravity unmatched by other cartoons of the era.
The theme song for the series, performed by Sami Clark, became an anthem that the Lebanese singer continued to perform at concerts and festivals right up until his death in 2022.
By the early 1980s, “Grendizer” had spread across the Middle East, inspiring fandoms in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and beyond. For many, it was not only their first exposure to anime, it also delivered lessons on values such as justice and honor.
Grendizer was so influential in the region that it became the subject of scholarly research, which in addition to recognizing the ways in which the plight of the show’s characters resonated with the audience in the Middle East, also linked the show’s popularity to generational memories of displacement, particularly the Palestinian Nakba.
Half a century later, “Grendizer” remains culturally alive and relevant in the region. In Saudi Arabia, which embraced the original version of the show wholeheartedly, Manga Productions is now introducing a new generation of fans to a modernized version of the character, through a video game, The Feast of The Wolves, which is available in Arabic and eight other languages on platforms including PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, and a new Arabic-language anime series, “Grendizer U,” which was broadcast last year.
Fifty years after the debut of the show, “Grendizer” is back — although to a generation of fans of the original series, their shelves still full of merchandise and memorabilia, it never really went away.
