Where is Austin Tice?: The escape

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0:22We just passed a sign of the buyer. That's where he was staying. That's where he was staying, right before he left. Like, that day. That must be really strange to drive past that. I would say so. It's May 2025. I'm driving into Damascus with Deborah, Austin's mother. She looks out towards the neighbourhood where Austin spent his 31st birthday, just before his abduction. At the time, few journalists dared to report from Damascus. It was simply too dangerous. and he just was too eager, too eager to go, and too confident after how long he had been here. Invincible. I mean, that's the danger of reporting in conflict for a while, is that you sort of start to become a nerd to the danger and the violence.

1:22I think it's not unique to Austin that everyone goes through that to some degree. Yeah, like you have some kind of survivor magic or something like that. Five months ago, after the fall of the regime, this road was deserted. Now it's choked with traffic. The country has entered the post-Assad era. During that time, nobody has been able to find Austin. And speculation has grown that he may have been killed. but Deborah rejects that and remains determined to find him. How does it feel to come into Syria? I was just thinking about that. I can't even explain how much more deeply I can breathe than when I think about Aspen being here and I'm so much closer to him here than I have been since August of 2012.

2:33You know, an ocean away. You've got this massive smile on your face. It's really nice to see. I mean, I've seen you. It's fixing to be tears of joy. I can feel it bubbling up.

2:49Deborah's hopeful that today will be the day she gets new information about Austin's whereabouts. We're in Damascus to meet a man who's contacted her because he says he was held with Austin and has new information about his location. Shock run. Shock run hatch. Muslim. OK, let's get the car unloaded. In a covered courtyard, we sit beneath an orange tree. Deborah, do you know how you want to have this chat? Have you thought about it? Um, no, I didn't have a big end. You're the journalist. I think for me, we want to be as specific as possible, right? And we want all these little details. Well, we also want to ask him, he says Austin's not in Syria.

3:39Well, if Austin is not in Syria, where is he? But also the crucial thing then is, how do you know that? How do you have this information? Let me, I'll just write that down. Deborah's told me that over the years, countless people have contacted her claiming to have vital information about Austin. But often, all they really want is money. The difficulty is Deborah doesn't feel she can ignore them because each message might be a chance to find her son. So today she's nervous about the meeting and has asked for my advice on how to fact-check this person's story. And I want to know if he's telling the truth too.

4:23We should ask this man, what did Austin look like? You know, so Austin had tattoos. He had the tribal. Down his arm. Yeah. Which arm? Uh, left. Left arm. And then he has a giant eagle on his back. I think they're ridiculous. You don't like his tattoos? I think we really need to go. In a private room with the microphone off at Deborah's request, we meet a man in a long white robe. He takes Deborah's hands and calls her mother. His large gold rings glint in the light. Then comes the account of his imprisonment with Austin. He says they became friends and looked after each other, and that some nights Austin cried in his arms.

5:16Deborah leans in. She seems desperate for information about her son. He speaks of their captivity, rarely breaking eye contact with Deborah. But he describes Austin as short when he's over six foot tall. He can't identify his distinctive tattoos. and doesn't know the name of the prison they were held in. The more he speaks, the more things just don't add up. After an hour, Deborah leans back, turns and looks at me with a blank expression and says, there isn't enough of my son in this story. I make an excuse so we can leave. As we walk past the man, he asks Deborah to introduce him to Syria's new president.

6:02He says he has debts and needs help. His motive has become clear. He's another in a long line of people who are looking to exploit her grief for their gain.

6:23How does it feel to be leaving Damascus?

6:29It's just really difficult. Oh, Deborah, I'm sorry. Yeah, it is. I don't know why this happened last time. I never let the cheers come out of my eyes. They come out of my nose.

6:46Yeah, that's ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. I think you have a lot of emotions, a lot of, you know, this is as close as you've been able to get to your son for a long time, right? Yeah. And I really believe he knows when I'm here. I do. You feel closer to him? Yeah. Yeah, and you know how much he loves Sirion and the people of Sirion.

7:24The longer Austin is missing, the harder it becomes for Deborah to push back against the growing belief that he's dead. So her fight has narrowed to something simple, finding evidence that he's alive. So I'm trying to work out, when was the last time anyone actually saw Austin Tice? I'm Josh Baker, and from BBC Radio 4 and NPR's Embedded, this is Where is Austin Tice? Series 3 of I'm Not a Monster Presents. Episode 7. The Escape.

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9:24He's very smartly dressed. How are you? Joshua. Yes, indeed. How are you? It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. This is Sarah. Hello. Hello. How are you?

9:40If you told me three years ago, when we started working on this, that we'd be able to be in Syria and go visit with somebody from the security services in their house and do an interview. It wasn't allowed. It wasn't allowed. It wasn't allowed. This is Safwan Pahlour. He was a senior Syrian intelligence officer who served overseas in the regime's foreign intelligence services. It's the equivalent of MI6 or the CIA. He's in his 60s and has an outfit that feels considered a crisp dark suit that hangs slightly loose on his tall thin frame. You started talking about Austin very early on, publicly.

10:23I realised very early that I should give this information because, you know, the guy may be forgotten in a dungeon or somewhere. Finding Safwan wasn't difficult. While most people connected to Austin's case have gone into hiding, Safwan decided to appear on the news channel Al Jazeera Arabic and revealed that he interrogated Austin Tice.

11:15other than a journalist. So they possibly suspected he was maybe CIA or something like that? Yeah, it's possible, you know. When we investigated Austin's abduction, we uncovered that the regime had been watching him for around a month. They'd seen Austin showing rebels how to use weapons, and this made them think he was a spy, not a journalist. And he wants me to investigate the guy, because I have English, good English, a colonel led me to the prison cell. He was detained there. What was that cell like? It was above the ground. It was something like two metres by three metres. Were there lots of other prisoners there?

12:00No, no, no. Such a person of importance will not be mingled with other guys. It was very silent when I made my sessions with the guy, two or three sessions, I remember. And so could you tell me about the first moment that you saw Austin? He was wearing, as I remember, a green cotton T-shirt. The guy was, let's say, good built. Muscular. Yeah, and his morale is good. He was optimistic about it. He was feeling that it will pass. And for me, myself also, I think it will pass. You're not dealing with an ordinary country. You're dealing with America. So eventually you will be forced to just, you know, in a way or another to release the guy.

12:48Before you interrogate him, what do you do? I presume you want to develop a strategy for that. Absolutely not. I didn't do any because I was not an investigator. That was not my field, you know. There's, let's say, specialized investigators, but he chose me for this mission. This surprises me. Safwan says he's a trained intelligence officer. He worked overseas as a spy and has told me he was briefly taught by British intelligence. So he would know interrogation isn't just a conversation. It's tactical, a way of extracting information, testing answers, applying pressure. And that makes me wonder whether Safwan is being selective about what he tells me.

13:35So the thing I like to start with was his phone because it was solid information. I was hoping the nature of his relations will show in his phone book. So this is what I went through, his phone book. In fact, that was the main and only route I took. What did Austin Tice's phone book tell you about Austin? Some of the names were the people he met in a little city in north of Syria on the Turkish border. Some of the numbers were in back home, the Washington Post and McClatchy and et cetera. In fact, he was cooperative, to be honest about it, and he didn't try to camouflage or, let's say, hide his past or his presence.

14:25He told me he was an ex-officer in the Marines, I remember, and he talked emotionally about his sisters and brothers. He's a family guy. I tried to get straight answers from the guy if he was really an ex-military person or he was still in active service. And he tried to appear honest about it. And I believe the guy. What did he say? He said he was an ex-military. He insisted on it. He made me laugh, in fact, when he tried to gain information from me. I think it was in the first, maybe, or second session. and he tried to know why didn't the rebels succeed in storming Damascus. When I interviewed the journalist David Enders, who'd briefly worked with Austin in Syria, he told me that Austin believed the rebels were about to take Damascus.

15:21It's one of the reasons he went there. Now, in regime custody, he seems to want to know why it hadn't happened and is bold enough to ask his interrogator. Because he was cooperative, he asked me if I could facilitate, you know, make his life easier. So he asked for journals, magazines, and soap and a towel. But what happened next is still amazing for me even. I remember I got them from my office and I gave them to Austin. and the next day I had a telephone. Our POW escaped. So you gave Austin soap and towels and then the next day he escaped? He used soap to lubricate his body and used a towel to throw it over the shattered glass cemented in the fence.

16:15It's survival techniques. I think probably he got it through his military training. Austin's escape is something I've been looking into for a while. I was first told about it by an intelligence source. And since then, we've found traces of it in documents, emails, and been given accounts from multiple people. This is what I think happened. Austin was on the run in Damascus, moving between neighbourhoods, sleeping rough, surviving on scraps of food from bins. He was seen on CCTV near embassies and reached the edge of a UN building. An alleged witness says, one night at 2am, Austin walked towards a building.

16:59Apparently, he looked like a beggar, barefoot and miserable. Security approached him, but he pushed past a guard and disappeared. The heartbreaking thing is, is how close he came to safety. He could have sought diplomatic protection. But by then, the regime was hunting him. US intelligence picked up that Syrian forces had issued an alert describing Austin. Militia members, soldiers, sniffer dogs, all searching for one exhausted American, who was alone in a city he didn't know, surrounded by a language he couldn't speak. For a brief moment, Austin had regained his freedom, but then it was taken from him.

17:46After around a week on the run, he was recaptured as he tried to move towards the Lebanese border. When they captured him, I went there and they made me meet him. That was the last time I met him. And in that meeting, he was very desperate. He was just like somebody that walked for something like 10 miles in the sun. You know, he was just... Distressed? Very, very much distressed. That was the last time I saw the guy. I don't know if Safwan is telling me everything he knows, but his account places Austin alive and in regime custody towards the end of the summer of 2012. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care.

18:37Thank you. Thank you. I love it.

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20:15While looking into Austin's escape, we came across a Syrian lawyer who worked with prisoners. After a call, she says she thinks she might be able to help me, but wants to meet in person. I'm standing outside an apartment building in a borough of Paris. It's autumn and cold and rainy. Leaves on the trees in front of me have turned this beautiful orange. I'm here to meet somebody whose husband disappeared into the Syrian prison system. And I've come because apparently her husband had information about Austin Tice.

21:00Hello. Hi. How are you? Nice to meet you. I love your earrings. They're so beautiful. Thank you very much. They're so cool. Noora Ghazi is a Syrian lawyer who represented prisoners that were detained by the Syrian regime. In order to understand her connection to Austin, she tells me about her partner, Basil Hatabil al-Safadi, a well-known activist. So I met Basil in April in 2011 in demonstration. We fell in love. Both of us were followed by the security. We were hiding. Yes, we got engaged. It was two weeks before our wedding. It was March 2012. We should go to the last trial for my wedding dress.

21:51And Basil insisted to go for a meeting. I told him I have a bad feeling and I'm waiting and no Basel. So after midnight, I should realize, okay, Basel is detained. So I was like very calm. I sent messages to all our friends who were still in Damascus to not reply any call or message from Basel because it could be like a trap. Like Syrian intelligence, trying to... After I finished, I totally collapsed. And his day disappeared for nine months. Nine months? Yeah. Did you know where he was? No. You had no news? No. After months of heartache, Nora tells me she gets a message from a woman who has a relative being held in the same prison as Basil, and that she has a letter from Basil that's been smuggled out.

22:55So Nora goes to visit that prison as a lawyer and secretly passes a letter back to Basil through another prisoner. For weeks, this becomes their hidden way to communicate. It's fragile, indirect and dangerous. But Nora still has all of those letters. How was Syrian intelligence, the Mahabharat, not... Why were they allowing these letters? They don't know. It was secret? Yeah. Wow. I used to do the visit as a lawyer. So at that time, they don't search lawyers. It's normal to exchange papers between prisoners and lawyers. How did it feel to receive a letter from Basil when he was in prison? Oh, it was the most beautiful part.

23:42But reviewing them, it's very emotional for me. OK, this one. this letter is like almost four pages but this is the part or the page that includes only one sentence actually about Austin. Hold on, so your husband was talking in English to an American journalist called Austin Tice? Yeah, he didn't even write Tice. What did he say Only Austin. Okay. They discovered me talking in English with an American journalist from Washington Post. His name is Austin. So this would mean that your husband was basically, for a very brief moment, in prison with Austin? Yeah. What date is this? So I think this was late of October, beginning of November, when he talked with Austin.

24:37because Basel was moved in November 11th. And by the way, I'm sorry to say this, but all these people that Basel mentioned in this letter, including Basel, they were killed. I'm sorry. So. That's so hard. Yeah. It was very hard for me to accept it. It took me two years to face the truth that he was executed. and then almost 10 years in uncertainty. I never had like a feeling of that. Okay, this is final. Were you ever able to find Basil's body? Not yet. Now it's the short-term goal. I'm working on it. He deserves a real funeral. He deserved to be buried close to his father. And I deserve to have a closure.

25:45After we finish talking, Nora suddenly jumps up. She's made me lunch and she insists I stay. So we sit at her table and slowly the weight of what we've been discussing begins to lift. Her new husband joins us. There's food, conversation, small moments of warmth. And there's something quietly beautiful in that. Basil is still with her, in the stories she tells, in the letters she keeps, and in the grief that hasn't left. But her life hasn't stopped either. Despite everything the regime took from her, she's found a way to be loved again.

26:28Speaking to Nora places Austin in a Syrian intelligence facility around November 11th, 2012. It's another date that moves Austin's timeline forward. When we check her account with regime sources, we learn that Austin was then sent back to Bassam al-Hassan's men who'd abducted him in the first place. So I go back to Syria and meet up with my colleague Sara. Together we go to Bassam's now abandoned office to look for any trace of Austin. We're going into Bassam Hassan's office, who was Bashar al-Assad's advisor. There's a chance we might find a document of some sorts here that could tell us something about Austin.

27:19This guy was one of the top generals that worked under Bashar al-Assad. He was an advisor to him, but he was also in charge of other files, including chemical weapons, issues relating to certain prison facilities, the works.

27:39Inside a long single-storey building, we find his office and a grand wooden desk. There are also packets of new shoulder patches, showing two crossed swords, denoting his rank of Major General. This is his private office. It's been ransacked by looters. Papers are scattered everywhere. A side door leads me into a bedroom. Inside a cupboard I find Viagra and a bottle of Jack Daniels. It's a strange, grim little room. Another door leads out onto a path. Wow, look at this. There's a massive tunnel that goes under the mountainside. I'm climbing up a ladder in a shaft.