Three months after he was last heard from, freelance journalist Austin Tice is still missing in Syria, and the government there is denying all knowledge of his whereabouts.
A Georgetown law student and former Marine who was raised in Houston and attended the University of Houston, Tice had been reporting on the civil war in Syria since May for news organizations including the Washington Post, McClatchy-Tribune, CNN and CBS News, last speaking to his editors on Aug. 13.
Tice's parents have traveled from Houston to Beirut to find more information about what happened to their son.
Tice's parents have traveled from Houston to Beirut to find more information about what happened to their son and held a news conference from there on Monday. According to The New York Times, the Syrian government told Marc and Debra Tice that it has no information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, despite officials from the State Department urging Syrian officials to be more "forthcoming" about Tice.
The Tices also told news organizations that they were willing to travel to Syria to retrieve their son.
Since his disappearance, Tice has long been rumored to be in the custody of the Syrian government. (Tice, like many journalists covering the conflict, entered the country illegally.) A video of Tice held by what appear to be Islamist militants was posted online in early October, although the details shown in the video and its method of dissemination raised immediate questions about the authenticity of the scene.
