US hostage envoy in Beirut to ask details on missing journalist Austin Tice

The US government's top hostage negotiator is in Beirut in hopes of collecting information on the whereabouts of Austin Tice, an American journalist missing in Syria for 12 years, the State Department said on Monday.

Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, is talking to officials in the region following the overthrow of Bashar Assad's government to find out where Tice is and get him home as soon as possible, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters on Monday.

Lebanon has been involved for years in mediating talks about Tice.

President Joe Biden said on Sunday that his administration believed Tice was alive and was committed to bringing him home, though he also acknowledged that we have no direct evidence of his status.

Tice, who has had his work published by The Washington Post, McClatchy newspapers and others, disappeared at a checkpoint in a contested area west of Damascus as the Syrian civil war intensified.

A video released weeks after Tice went missing showed him blindfolded and held by armed men and saying, Oh, Jesus.

He has not been heard from since. Syria has publicly denied that it was holding him.