I assume Tice's military experience would not be too hard to find. If the Assad regime was aware he entered the country they would have perceived him to be an intelligence operative and targeted him.
As I mentioned to someone else, I think he’d have been targeted as a journalist, no matter what, but you’re right, his military service would not have helped. He was also at the time of his abduction still in the Marine Reserves.
I wonder if he saw something he should not have and was caught writing about it. Inside the prison that was recently searched by the rebels after they had won their fight said there were rooms filled with unburied bodies. They also found some kind of press made of heavy metals and powered to flatten stuff and learned this is how they executed prisoners. Around the area with the unburied bodies there were a lot of bone fragments. I hope he was not executed like this. I was sickened when I saw the videos. And thinking about a journalist from the US might have died like that makes me mad in the very core of my being. It makes me feel the same way about the Syrian people who died like that, but while I have never met Austin, him being a fellow American makes me feel a 1:350,000,000 connection to him which is like losing a friend to violence after being kidnapped.
That is certainly disturbing. It seems like they have pretty good reason to believe he was still alive at the time Assad fled, and whoever was holding him no doubt knew he was a high-value hostage, so, for now, fingers crossed. But Assad is a war criminal who used chemical weapons against his own people, and had nothing to lose when he fled. Tice would inevitably have been a target because people like that always see journalists as the enemy. During Liberia’s civil war, journalists were frequently arrested by the ruling government and charged with spying, and I was warned by the State Department that the Liberian president saw me that way and that I should not get out of the embassy’s radio range. Moral of the story is to beware anyone who sees a journalist as the enemy.
I assume Tice's military experience would not be too hard to find. If the Assad regime was aware he entered the country they would have perceived him to be an intelligence operative and targeted him.
As I mentioned to someone else, I think he’d have been targeted as a journalist, no matter what, but you’re right, his military service would not have helped. He was also at the time of his abduction still in the Marine Reserves.
I wonder if he saw something he should not have and was caught writing about it. Inside the prison that was recently searched by the rebels after they had won their fight said there were rooms filled with unburied bodies. They also found some kind of press made of heavy metals and powered to flatten stuff and learned this is how they executed prisoners. Around the area with the unburied bodies there were a lot of bone fragments. I hope he was not executed like this. I was sickened when I saw the videos. And thinking about a journalist from the US might have died like that makes me mad in the very core of my being. It makes me feel the same way about the Syrian people who died like that, but while I have never met Austin, him being a fellow American makes me feel a 1:350,000,000 connection to him which is like losing a friend to violence after being kidnapped.
That is certainly disturbing. It seems like they have pretty good reason to believe he was still alive at the time Assad fled, and whoever was holding him no doubt knew he was a high-value hostage, so, for now, fingers crossed. But Assad is a war criminal who used chemical weapons against his own people, and had nothing to lose when he fled. Tice would inevitably have been a target because people like that always see journalists as the enemy. During Liberia’s civil war, journalists were frequently arrested by the ruling government and charged with spying, and I was warned by the State Department that the Liberian president saw me that way and that I should not get out of the embassy’s radio range. Moral of the story is to beware anyone who sees a journalist as the enemy.