A senior White House official made a secret visit to Syria for high-level talks aimed at securing the release of two Americans that Washington believes are held prisoners by the Assad government, US administration officials said Monday.
Kash Patel, a deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, went to Syria as part of an administration effort to secure the release of Americans overseas, including missing journalist Austin Tice, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
The trip, the first high-level visit by an American official to Syria in years, was first reported Sunday by The Wall Street Journal.
Gaining the release of Tice, a journalist from Texas who disappeared while covering the civil war in 2012, would be a significant foreign policy victory for Trump, whose administration has touted its record of freeing Americans held overseas as well as an unconventional approach to Middle East politics, The Associated Press reported.
Direct talks had also been sought by the missing journalist’s parents, Marc and Debra Tice.
“For years we have pushed for engagement between the US and Syrian governments to help bring our son safely home, so we hope recent reports are accurate,” they said in a statement.
“We are deeply grateful to everyone working for Austin’s safe return, and his continued absence shows there is more to be done.”
Tice, a former Marine and native of Houston, Texas, vanished in August 2012 in the Damascus suburb of Daraya as he was about to make a trip to Lebanon and was detained at a checkpoint. He had been working as a freelance journalist for CBS News and other outlets.
Trump has made negotiating the release of US citizens held hostage or imprisoned in foreign countries a priority.
A top Lebanese intelligence official has been in Washington since last week. Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim has negotiated the release of a US citizen from Syria and a Lebanese man who is also a permanent US resident from Iran.
Abbas’s departure from Washington was delayed, and a planned trip to Paris canceled, because he contracted COVID-19, according to Lebanon’s General Security Directorate.
Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his recent book that negotiations on the US role in Syria were “complicated by Trump’s constant desire to call Assad on US hostages.
Kamalmaz’s daughter, Maryam, said the family still has no news about her father’s health or whereabouts.
“We are hoping this meeting will bring some updates and news about him.”
Tens of thousands of people are believed held in Syrian prisons since the country’s civil war broke out in 2011. Many are held incognito for years in lock-ups rife with torture and disease. In the country’s war, militant groups have also resorted to kidnapping foreigners for ransom or rivals to settle scores.
According to AP, the Syrian government has not publicly acknowledged knowing anything about his whereabouts.
A pro-Syrian government newspaper Al-Watan also confirmed the Journal’s report, adding that Patel and Roger Carstens, special presidential envoy for hostages affairs, were in Damascus in August, where they met with the Syrian intelligence chief to discuss the Americans.
The paper also said it was the third such secret visit by senior US officials in past years.
The other missing man is Majd Kamalmaz, a 62-year-old clinical psychologist from Virginia, who disappeared in 2017 and is believed to be held in a Syrian government prison.
His daughter, Maryam, said the family learned of Patel’s visit last week.
“Praying for the best from it,” she said, speaking to The AP in a series of messages.
The family believes the trip occurred within the past two weeks but she had no further details.
There has not been a confirmed visit by a high-level American official to Damascus since the US shuttered its embassy in the capital and withdrew its ambassador in 2012 as the country’s civil war worsened.
However, numerous US officials, both military and civilian, have traveled to opposition-held parts of the country in the years since.
