The head of an American organization focused on hostage releases said on Monday he believes U.S. journalist Austin Tice was still being held in Syria by people loyal to toppled leader Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to Reuters in Damascus, Nizar Zakka said he believed Tice was being held by "very few people in a safe house in order to do an exchange or a deal." Zakka, a Lebanese businessman with U.S. permanent residency who was held in Iran for four years until 2019 on charges of spying, is the president of Hostage Aid Worldwide. He has traveled to Syria multiple times following Assad's ouster by rebels on Dec. 8 in a bid to track down Tice, a former U.S. Marine and a freelance journalist who was abducted in 2012 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Assad. Zakka said his group's own investigation had revealed Tice was still in Syria, and that "a lot of progress" had been made in his hunt in recent weeks. But he added that Syria's new rulers, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), had not provided much assistance.
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