This Marine vet is still missing in Syria after 7 years

Austin Tice is a former Eagle Scout, a former Marine Corps officer, and an award-winning journalist held in captivity in Syria. The Georgetown law student was on assignment there in 2012, covering individual stories set amid the background of the Syrian Civil War. Just five weeks after he arrived in the country, unidentified armed men released a 43-second video of Tice blindfolded and held hostage.

No one has claimed responsibility for his capture, unusual for such a propaganda war. After the first five years, his family was still trying to piece together what happened that led to Tice's capture. Now, the reward for information leading to Tice's whereabouts is more than $1 million.

No other information, photos, or video related to Tice has been released since.

Tice's family is on a mission to get the Syrian government of Bashar al-Asad and the government of the United States to cooperate, using every available resource to locate Austin Tice and bring him home. They say the United States believes Tice is alive. He was last seen getting into a car in a Damascus suburb but was detained at a checkpoint shortly after.

When President Trump took office in 2017, the new State Department set up a back-channel with the Syrian government to secure Tice's release. Unfortunately, that's when the U.S. involvement in Syria began to thicken, The administration was forced to launch Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military sites, and the talks stalled.

As of December 2018, Tice's parents divulged that they had received information that Tice is still alive and had survived his captivity. They believe he is being held by the Syrian government or one of its allies and the U.S. State Department has called on Russia to exert its influence is obtaining Tice's release.

The Syrians insist they don't know where Tice is being held, but the Tice family maintains that the best chance for the man's release would come from direct talks between the United States government and that of the Syrian Arab Republic.