🖊 Josh Baker - Sarah Abedeh

BBC investigations show that the abduction of Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, was a calculated operation and had been planned for more than a month.

One of the members of the group that took Tice captive has also claimed that Bashar Assad, the then-president of Syria, had approved the kidnapping.

They had seen Tice while she was getting into a vehicle driven by someone who knew her and trusted her. For years, many had believed that the two had happened to end up at a government checkpoint by chance, and that government forces had taken advantage of the opportunity and abducted the journalist.

But we have found evidence showing that his disappearance was in no way accidental.

International media have followed his case closely, and U.S. presidents have spoken about it one after another.

Twelve years later, with the fall of the government, tens of thousands of people came out of Syrian prisons. Tice was not among them.

📷Getty