Why CNN’s latest claims on Austin Tice’s death are unreliable

CNN’s recycled claims have been repeated afresh in their article of 28 October 2025 called ‘The road that led, 13 years later to hearing Austin is dead’ 1. It would hold no weight in a court of law. The sensationalised story aims to put an end to the questions raised about the fate of the short-term American reporter and former Marine Corps Captain, Austin Tice who disappeared on his birthday during Ramadan, August 2012.

Bassam al-Hassan accused by CNN but not charged with the murder of Austin Tice by the US authorities

CNN once again cites Bassam al-Hassan living quietly and apparently securely in Beirut. Al Hassan had already been interviewed by the FBI at the American fortress-style new embassy in Beirut and is said to have failed a polygraph test. His account of having carried out the orders of Bashar al-Assad to kill Austin Tice has been questioned by the BBC and Austin Tice’s long hopeful mother. However, if it was taken seriously as CNN seem to do to rely on the core claim of their piece, why has al-Hassan not been charged with the attempted murder of an American citizen? If CNN holds him accountable for Tice’s murder why is the American justice machine not following it up?

The alleged locations

CNN claims to show a route linking Tice being taken from a government military prison up Mt Qasioun and the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research center where it was said they staged a video attributing his capture to jihadists. Later on in the same article they contradict this by claiming Tice was taken to the Syrian border with Lebanon at Rakhla where they filmed the video. The claim attributed to the witness, Nassour is ridiculous: “The video was posted online the next day, and it was as if Tice was held by Taliban in Afghanistan and he never entered Syria,” Nassour said.2 There was no suggestion of any connection with Afghanistan or the Taliban but with the jihadists in Syria like al-Nusra and ISIL

The CNN story then claims that of Bassam al-Hassan who had taken Tice: The US sanctions note his multiple roles in the regime including “acting as the Syrian presidential representative to Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), which is the government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and missiles.”

This takes us back to the allegations of chemical weapons the US, UK and France went on to justify their attacks on Syria in 2018. See: Sabotaging Syria. 3

This too is flawed as evidence. It is easy to draw sketches and make claims about what happened, but CNN provides no scrap of evidence to back up the story, aside from a mention of three witnesses. Pursuing the sketch, the FBI was apparently prevented from completing their ‘investigation’ after three days when Israel began bombing Qatar on September 9, yet why did this mean the FBI would have to leave Syria? They do not try to identify or to speak to any of the so-called actors in the video, they do not date it, they fail to undermine it as evidence because it inculpates the jihadists in veritas.

The alleged escape – an alibi for Ahmed al-Sharaa?

CNN’s witness, Bahloul, claims Austin Tice managed to escape from Tahoune military base after asking for soap and a towel to facilitate slipping through a window and using the towel for the broken glass. He is then supposed to have been AWOL as a high-value prisoner for an entire 24 hours before being recaptured in the diplomatic quarter of Mezzeh. At this time in August-September 2012, some foreign embassies were still functioning. If he had really escaped from there he had only to knock on the door of any number of those embassies in Mezzeh not allied with the government nor with the jihadist groups such as Turkey. These included the Embassies of the UAE, Egypt, Malaysia and Japan.

The additional holes in this story:

1. Anyone escaping from a military base in Damascus – including Syrian military prisoners that were being disciplined in Tahoune – would highly likely have been re-apprehended by the soldiers guarding the exits, the perimeter, and probably a last checkpoint down the road. There would almost certainly also have been CCTV in operation.
2. If this were indeed Austin, he would have made direct contact with the people he had been hanging out with, including his self-claimed CNN friend and the FSA. If that were not possible – although one would wonder why, as he could have gone straight to them or to the rebel -held areas he had been videotaping, the distance was just one mile.
3. Alternatively, he could alternatively have taken a taxi straight out of the country to Lebanon – a trip of just 35 minutes to the border with the main road overlooked by Rakhleh (where they now claim the jihadist video was ‘staged.’ He is said to have been in the process of making that journey when he was allegedly intercepted and taken prisoner by government forces. As a Westerner at the border of Lebanon he could have pleaded his case in having lost his documents and phone – such as through having been robbed.
4. The primary source inside Syria has been amnestied by Ahmed al-Sharaa/AKA al-Jolani who had years of experience of kidnapping and holding Westerners (and others) hostage under torture. What did this Syrian official have to do to be given an amnesty? Why is there no examination of HTS detention facilities, the secret and the known by CNN?
5. Concerning the video, they are trying to. say the govt. took Tice all the way to the border of Syria with Lebanon to ‘stage’ the ‘jihadist video’ at Rakhleh/Rakhla 31 km west of Damascus. This site overlooks the road to Beirut and the Bekaa. They claim the film was taken in September when the video was first posted on YouTube but the date it was shown does not mean that this was the date it was filmed. Rakhleh is mainly populated by the Druze and Israel has now gone in there, expecting little opposition.5

Hypothesis

Has this story been concocted to provide an alibi for Al-Jolani whose men claimed they had taken Tice? If they were the ones who had taken (and killed) Tice they certainly had the experience of Matt Schrier on his first successful escape attempt, and of Theo Padnos, having successfully escaped once but having then being handed back to al-Nusra by the FSA. On this matter he commented in response:

“Meanwhile here are some basic facts: Austin was hanging around with the FSA before he disappeared. So was Matt Schrier. I too spent some time with the Falcons of Sham in Idlib before my disappearance. We don’t know what happened with Austin, but we do know that in my case and in Matt’s, which occurred at roughly the same time as Austin’s disappearance, the FSA, feeling that they had happened across someone connected to the American government, and not knowing quite what to do, eventually called up Jebhat al Nusra. At the time, this made perfect sense. The FSA’s job was to fight Bashar al -Assad. And who was to fight the meddling Americans? This was al-Qaeda’s job. It was widely known that Adnani, al-Sharaa, and Abu Maria had done time in the American prisons in Iraq. Did those men now want to exact concessions? Revenge? It was up to them, the FSA men felt, logically enough.  

I doubt the FSA cared much about what happened to us. Their focus was Bashar al-Assad. 

Jebhat al Nusra on the other hand cared passionately. By the way, the FSA delivered over many of their Alawite prisoners to al-Sharaa et al for roughly the same reason. Because the Alawites were thought to be serving foreign powers, because they were almost certainly to be executed but on what grounds exactly the FSA men didn’t know. So, they called up al-Sharaa and Adnani and all the others who were hanging out in the Aleppo Eye Hospital. The moderate types trusted that Jebhat al Nusra would resolve the matter in accordance with the Will of God. 

Some questions Clarissa Ward might have asked her interview subjects: could they recognize anyone in the Austin Tice video? No, they cannot. Whereas I’m sure that al-Sharaa (could recognize) each and every vehicle and person. 

Do you know how when you live among people who never or rarely show their faces you get used to identifying (them) based on their clothes and the outlines of their bodies and the way they move? Ok maybe you don’t, but I do. I’m sure al-Sharaa does, too. That’s why I’m certain that if he felt like it, he could tell us who is who in that video and which cars belonged to whom. I suspect he or any of the others who were close to him in those days could lead us to other pics of the same people and cars. Also, to the site of the video. But as Clarissa is busy asking random Assad people random questions, I don’t think we’re likely to get to the bottom of this matter any time soon. 6

CNN would have us believe Austin Tice was wandering around Damascus for 24 hours without contacting anyone or making good such a prison break. The motive that is then advanced for the order for him to be killed is that he was a bad boy because he escaped. It is a very weak plot.

As the Arab Weekly opined after the collapse of the Syrian government in December 2024, “Ahmed al-Sharaa (perhaps during the last days of his nom-de-guerre of Abu Muhammad al-Golani as a fighter in Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) stood with the Turkish Foreign Minister and former intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, the engineer of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Golani persona, in a region that I had previously visited and which includes one of the most beautiful places overlooking Damascus from Mount Qasioun. I think they stood in the famous “Ahla Tala” vantage-point and sipped tea or coffee. They were maybe listening to the song “From Mount Qasioun, I see you, my homeland.” 7

In one of numerous IDF strikes against Syrian military installations now under al-Jolani’s control, Mt Qasioun was hit on May 3, 2025, and the Syrian Ministry of Defence headquarters in central Damascus on July 2025, inter alia. Haaretz reported:

Israel reportedly attacks targets in the Damascus area in Syria

According to reports by Arab media sources, Israel carried out seven strikes on targets in Syria. ‘One of the strikes targeted Mount Qasioun in Damascus, where Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaida-linked rebel group which had been operating against the Assad regime, has warehouses.’8

Motives

In twenty years of visiting and working in Syria between 1987-2008, I was never once refused a visa. I was permitted to interview the guest of the Syrian government, PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in Damascus in 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998 by Bashar’s father’s government before Ocalan was driven out under Turkish threats in October 1998 leading to his capture in February 1999. During the 1991 Kurdish uprising, Syrian Muhabarat officers allowed foreign journalists, including myself and Mark Stucke of Journeyman Pictures free passage into Iraqi Kurdistan across the river to Faysh Khabour after being waved through a government checkpoint in Derik on the Syrian side with a piece of exit paper stamped by the Muhabarat office based in Kamishly. Under Bashar in 2008, I obtained a visa and was never followed.

Bashar al-Assad may not have ‘been an angel’ – as they so like to say – but he did not stone women to death in the streets, behead people or take foreign journalists hostage. His government was secular. His wife’s parents still live in West London where the couple met before they married. He was an ophthalmologist comfortable with all the etiquette of the West. He also denied he had captured Austin Tice.

CNN claim that Tice was considered an ‘important prisoner,’ and perhaps believed to be a ‘spy.’ This is ludicrous: Tice was not at all important – not so important to seize him and then deny that they had him. He had no knowledge to give them that they did not already know. There was no need to hold him – or kill him- because he was never once used as a bargaining chip.

General Safwan Bassoul

A second witness is cited by CNN – the same name as in earlier reports – presented yet again. This man has now been pardoned and serves the al-Jolani/al-Sharaa regime. CNN wrote:

“Bahloul agreed to talk to CNN only after securing permission from the new government in Damascus. A security official led the way to his house up a leafy hill in Latakia, the coastal province in Syria known for its loyalty to the Assads. Unlike other former officials who fled Syria, Bahloul took a settlement offered by the new government that essentially gives him amnesty… “I went to [Al-Hassan’s] office and he told me, ‘We have caught an American journalist. We want you to interrogate and see the possibility if he’s not a mere journalist or if he’s a spy,’” Bahloul said.”

He claims Tice was held at the Tahoune guard base where he interviewed him three times. It was under the command of Ghassan Nassour who CNN then tracked to the UAE. He told them it was “was not a formal prison, but a brief detention facility for offending soldiers”.

CNN then cites only ‘a low-ranking soldier’ who says that until 2025 no one connected this prisoner with Tice.

That is not evidence. Nassour is also cited by CNN saying “Assad knew about Tice and knew he could use him in negotiations. It would be extremely stupid to kill him… to let go of a winning card in your hand,” Nassour said.9

It doesn’t stack up. Tice was not useful and there were no negotiations. The US, conversely, was committed to regime change.

The video ‘evidence’

CNN now captions the video evidence of the jihadists hauling Tice roughly between them up a mountain, ‘Assad regime soldiers dressed up as jihadists.’ (Obtained by CNN). CNN was not the first to ‘obtain the video. They use only a screen shot there. See my article: “Hostages to Jihad – Austin Tice, The Long Missing American in Syria”

“The video was posted online the next day, and it was as if Tice was held by Taliban in Afghanistan and he never entered Syria,” Nassour said. 10 This is manifestly absurd as Tice had been sending out his pieces from Syria picked up by the Washington Post and McClatchy. It was well known he was in Syria.

The low-ranking unnamed officer also says no one knows who this ‘important prisoner’ was.

Alibi for al-Sharaa?

Al-Jolani is a mass murderer whose bounty as a ‘wanted terrorist’ the Americans lifted because he serves their purpose. This does not give him the right to demand the extradition of Bashar al-Assad nor the authority to ‘try him’ as he repeatedly urges. Most murderers are not given the leg up to take over the running of a country. However, this is the same country that the Americans, British and French marked for regime change in a repeat performance of their destruction of Iraq. His record has enough blemishes even without the execution of Austin Tice.

Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.

The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.

Copyright © 2025 Sheri Laizer, iKurd.net. All rights reserved