Mother of US journalist kidnapped in Syria says he's alive

"We have from a significant source that has already been vetted all over our government, Austin Tice is alive, Austin Tice is treated well," Debra Tice, surrounded by family members, told a news conference in Washington.

"We want to be very careful about what we share. He is being cared for and he is well, we do know that," she added.

Tice is a freelance photojournalist who was working for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other news organizations when he was detained at a checkpoint in Daraya, a suburb of Damascus, on August 14, 2012.

Little information has been made public since his abduction. He appeared blindfolded in a video in September 2012, when he was 31, but the identity of the kidnappers remains unknown to this day.

In 2022, US President Joe Biden accused Syria of holding Tice and called on its government to help secure his release. Damascus denied it was keeping any Americans captive, including Tice.

Tice's mother declined to say where Tice might be held and added that "diplomacy" will help win her son's freedom.

"Words not bombs, words not guns -- that is how Austin is going to come home," she said.

On Friday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment directly on Debra Tice's remarks, although she said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who has "regularly met with the families of wrongfully detained Americans," had met with Tice's family in the afternoon.

"I can't even imagine what they're going through right now as they think about Austin Tice, as they I'm sure continue to have hoped and prayed for Austin to come home to them," she said.

Back in 2020, then-US president Donald Trump had sent Syria's Bashar al-Assad a personal message inquiring about Tice. Trump said he did not know whether the journalist was still alive.

The family comments come less than two months before the inauguration of Trump -- on whom Tice's relatives are pinning substantial hope after his election -- and at a time when Syrian rebels have launched a major offensive, seizing dozens of key cities and towns.

After taking Aleppo, the major city in Syria's north, the rebels are at the gates of Homs, some 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Damascus in a dramatic advance after 13 years of civil war.