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"The Americans drove through here," the Syrian army guard said, pointing to a steep road behind him. "I don’t know where they headed, I’m not allowed up there."

The barricaded road leads to a labyrinth of military facilities wedged into the rocky slopes of Mount Qasioun on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. It was as close as CNN could get to the locations searched by an FBI-led team that came here in September looking for traces of American journalist Austin Tice — more than a decade after he disappeared.

The American team was hard to miss, arriving in a convoy of armored vehicles. Their objective was two-fold: to search for the place where Tice was last believed to have been held and, if possible, to find his remains.

CNN’s Clarissa Ward confronts the man who held Austin Tice captive. Subscribe to watch the full exclusive report.

Chasing A Ghost

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The US search focused on a facility called the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. It lasted less than three days. On September 9, Israel launched its explosive attack on Qatar and the delegation abruptly left.

The tip that led to the US search came from several witnesses, including Bassam Al-Hassan, a powerful adviser to former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the man who held Tice after his capture in mid-August 2012.

For 13 years, the mystery of what happened to Austin Tice has plagued multiple US administrations. Then, after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, witnesses began to emerge. After fleeing to Iran, Al-Hassan made his way to Beirut, жесткое групповое порно Lebanon in April, where he was interrogated by FBI investigators, along with several associates, about Tice’s capture.