The Weekend Intelligence: The hunt for Austin Tice
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
On December 8th, 2024, rebels swept into Damascus and ousted Syria's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. One of the first things they did was open up the prisons. Syrians who disappeared years earlier began to emerge from their grim detention cells. Would missing American journalist Austin Tice be among them?
In a new three-part series on The Weekend Intelligence, Middle East correspondent, Gareth Browne investigates what happened to Austin and explores what his story reveals about Assad's Republic of Fear.
In episode one, Gareth tells the story of Austin’s time in Syria leading up to his capture.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Blockchain. Crypto. It's happening to investments, currency, food trucks. Yes, payments are possible |
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| 0:55.4 | The Open University, the future is open. |
| 1:14.1 | Today, The Economist. Today on the weekend intelligence, we're bringing you something a little different. |
| 1:19.0 | The first episode in a three-part series we've been making for months. |
| 1:24.1 | It's a groundbreaking investigation about an American journalist who went missing in Syria over the summer of 2012. |
| 1:31.3 | The search for him has lasted more than a decade. His name, Austin Tice. |
| 1:36.3 | Can I just ask you a question in English? And you try to answer in English, if you can. |
| 1:42.3 | Who has the answer to Austin Tice's case? Who knows what happened to Austin |
| 1:47.4 | Tice? For the past six months, the Economist's Middle East correspondent Gareth Brown has been on |
| 1:53.8 | Austin's trail, trying to find out who took him, why they held on to him, and what Syrian dictator |
| 1:59.7 | Bashar al-Assad knew about the American detained in his country. |
| 2:04.3 | It's an attempt to shed some light on a decade of darkness in one of the most mystifying and oppressive dictatorships of the modern era, |
| 2:11.4 | a story that could only be reported since December 24, when Syrians finally got their freedom and the state's secrets |
... |
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