Debra Tice cites U.S. unwillingness to listen to Syria in effort to free Austin

A year after President Joe Biden ordered White House national security staff to engage with Syria to free award-winning journalist Austin Tice, his mother is still waiting for results.

“The president gave the directive May 2, 2022,” Debra Tice said at a National Press Club news conference Tuesday. “Do we have movement? Is he the most powerful man on earth? Do people do what he says to do? Does his staff do what he says to do?”

Although a recent report in a Syrian publication indicated that there were meetings between the U.S. government and the governments of Syria and Oman, Tice is not sure whether there has been progress in releasing her son. He disappeared while covering the Syrian civil war in 2012 and has been illegally detained ever since.

Tice talks with White House staff when she comes to Washington. She can’t reveal details of those discussions, she said, but what was clear during the Club event was that instead of hugging her son, she’s wondering when she will hold him again.

“Here are my empty arms, so you can see how effective all this effort has been, right?” Tice said during a discussion with Club President Eileen O’Reilly. “The evidence should be here, and I should be home sorting laundry, frankly. I just keep coming. I keep pressing and pushing.”

O’Reilly asked Tice what was preventing progress in freeing her son.

“The president gave a very clear directive to get a meeting, listen, find out what they want and work with them,” Tice said. “I think the impediment is an unwillingness to take that listening and turn it into what we’re going to discuss with them.”

Tice used a grocery-shopping metaphor to illustrate the impasse. “If you’re talking to me about wanting some produce, and I come over and have a bag of light bulbs, how are you feeling? And so that’s kind of how I see this,” she said.

The Syrians are willing to negotiate, Tice said.

“I think they have a lot of things they want to talk about,” she said. “And I think they’re keen to engage and have discussion.”

Tice said she notices a strong anti-Syria sentiment at the State Department but she stressed that talking to Syria about her son won’t require altering the U.S. approach to the country.

“We can negotiate and we can bring Austin home without changing our foreign policy,” Tice said.

In remarks at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner Saturday, Biden said obtaining Tice’s release remains an administration priority.

“We are not ceasing our effort to get him, find him and bring him home,” Biden said.

Tice was touched by Biden’s description of her son during his speech. “He held on to what we told him in our meeting last year when he was talking about Austin this year,” she said.

The White House is now working to free two U.S. journalists wrongfully detained abroad since Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia in March.

“This is a heartbreaking thing to tell you. There’s strength in numbers,” Tice said. “I’m so sorry that Evan is partnering with Austin. But I am profoundly grateful that the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are going to work together to get these two journalists home. In some really horrible way, I think it’s good for both of them that there are two because that is so many too many.”