MOSCOW — The mother of U.S. journalist Austin Tice sent Russian President Vladimir Putin a letter late Wednesday asking for his help in finding her son, who went missing in Syria a dozen years ago.
"The current situation in Syria compels us to ask for your help in finding Austin and safely reuniting our family," Debra Tice wrote. "You have profound connections with the Syrian government, which can be a great benefit for our unrelenting efforts to find our Austin and reunite our family."
"In this holiday season of peace and goodwill, we respectfully request your assistance in finding Austin and safely reuniting him with our family," she wrote.
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NBC News obtained a copy of the letter just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured Debra Tice that Israel would not conduct airstrikes near a secret prison outside Damascus where she believed her son may have been held.
Putin is a longtime patron of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted earlier this month and fled the country to Russia. He and his late father ruled with an iron fist for half-a-century.
Assad's sudden downfall raised the Tice family's hopes that the missing journalist might be in Mt. Qasioun prison, which is under a military museum and has a hidden tunnel that has not been fully explored.
But Debra Tice said she's ready to reunite with her son wherever he may be.
"We would, of course, be willing to travel to Moscow or any place on earth to put our arms around our precious Austin and bring him safely home," she wrote.
In an interview with NBC News, Debra Tice said she had no misgivings about asking Putin for help.
“Of course I am reaching out to powerful people, so they can help us," she said. "Russia has had a port there in Latakia forever, so I do think they have the ability to know what’s going on on the ground. We are still trying to find out where he is."
Austin Tice disappeared in 2012, when he was in Syria reporting on the country’s civil war.
Shortly after he vanished, the State Department concluded that he was being held by the hostile Syrian government, a charge that Assad denied for years.
Since the civil war in Syria erupted in 2011, hundreds of thousands of political prisoners disappeared into Assad’s sprawling network of prisons and many were tortured and killed.
Both Assad and his father, Hafez al-Assad, who died in 2000, have been accused by human rights groups of massacring and abusing their fellow Syrians.
But after the downfall of the Assad regime, thousands of prisoners who had been held captive for years have been released. But there still has been no sign of Tice.
A former prisoner told NBC News in the last few weeks that he was held captive in a cell across the hall from Tice and saw him alive as recently as July 2022.
But while NBC News has not been able to independently confirm that account, Debra Tice said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that “we were able to verify that he was” there in 2022.
