The United States has identified a handful of prisons in Syria that might provide clues to the fate of Austin Tice, an American journalist who was abducted in 2012 and believed held by the Syrian government.
The prisons were run by Syrian military intelligence and the Republican Guard, the elite forces stationed in Damascus, Syria’s capital. The U.S. government imposed sanctions on several military intelligence locations in 2021 for human rights abuses.
The Biden administration has long prioritized finding Mr. Tice. But the sudden collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s reign in Syria has given new urgency to the efforts and intensified hope that U.S. officials can finally learn Mr. Tice’s fate.
A senior administration official said that the U.S. government was working to find Mr. Tice and bring him home, but the official added that the United States did not have “new verifiable information” on his location.
The case has frustrated U.S. intelligence officials. The Syrian government has never acknowledged holding Mr. Tice and has shunned opportunities to make a deal for his release.
U.S. officials said the Trump administration and the Biden administration had both worked hard on the case. Several years ago, the C.I.A. created what is known as a targeting cell overseen by the intelligence analyst who had supervised the hunt for Osama bin Laden, a sign of how important the issue is to the agency.
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