US group looks for kidnapped Americans in Syria after fall of Assad regime: won't 'leave a stone unturned'
A U.S. nonprofit headquartered in Washington, D.C., is on the ground in Syria looking for kidnapped Americans in the aftermath of the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), told Fox News Digital in an interview from Damascus that he and six members of his team arrived in the capital Wednesday to look for Americans kidnapped or held captive by the ousted Assad regime, most notably, American freelance journalist Austin Tice and Syrian American psychotherapist Dr. Majd Kamalmaz.
"God willing, he's alive. God willing, we can find him and bring him home," Moustafa said of Tice. "Same for Majd, same for the other Americans whose names are not public."
Tice, who traveled to Syria as the country’s civil war was erupting, was kidnapped in 2012 while reporting in Daraya, a Damascus suburb. He was seen on a video released months after his capture wearing a black blindfold and being led away by a group of men shouting "Allahu Akbar."
Tice has not been seen or heard from since. The Syrian government has always denied holding Tice or other Americans.
Kamalmaz, a U.S. citizen who helped survivors of Hurricane Katrina and refugees from war-torn Syria and Kosovo recover from trauma and PTSD, was detained at a government checkpoint in Damascus while visiting a family member in February 2017.
U.S. officials presented the Kamalmaz family with classified information earlier this year, saying they believe the humanitarian died in Syria’s notorious prison system.
He likely died within a year or two of his detainment, his daughter Maryam told Fox News Digital in June, citing U.S. officials. The officials did not say how or where Dr. Kamalmaz died.
"We will not leave a stone unturned while I'm here in Damascus, and I hope to find them," said Moustafa.
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The SETF leader has several geolocations from sources and tips and has dispatched his team to specific locations in search of Tice.
"Now that Damascus is free, we have no restrictions. We can go anywhere," he added.
Moustafa praised Tice for his bravery and for traveling to Syria to report on the country’s brutal civil war and cover the plight of civilians in the early years of the outbreak.
"The very least that we can do is to look for him. And for a long time, we could only look for him through calling people, trying to find people that had been – that had come out of detention, seeing if they've seen him," he told Fox News Digital.
Joel Rayburn, the former U.S. special envoy for Syria, told Fox News Digital earlier this year the ousted Assad regime viewed Tice and other detainees as "cards" to use as leverage and to get concessions.
"We know it's almost certain that they have them in their custody, or they've had them in their custody, or they know definitively what happened to those people, but they're absolutely not forthcoming," Rayburn said.
The U.S. State Department is now offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on Tice and has conveyed to the leading Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that finding the journalist remains a top priority.
"In all of our communications with parties that we know talk to HTS, we have sent very clearly the message that, as they move through Syria liberating prisons, that our top priority is the return of Austin Tice," said State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller.
A Syrian journalist who was imprisoned by the Assad regime claims he was detained in a Damascus jail in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood with Tice at the same time until as recently as 2022, according to a report from The Sunday Times.
Moustafa told Fox News Digital he was aware of the article and plans to go "straight there" in the coming days to find out more information.
"It is every Syrian's job to do everything they can to get Austin back to his mother and his father, to his country, to his home," he said.