The road that led, 13 years later, to hearing: ‘Austin is dead’

CNN’s Clarissa Ward confronts the man who held Austin Tice captive. watch the full exclusive report.

“The Americans drove through here,” the Syrian army guard said, pointing to a steep road behind him. “I don’t know where they headed, I’m not allowed up there.”

The barricaded road leads to a labyrinth of military facilities wedged into the rocky slopes of Mount Qasioun on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus. It was as close as CNN could get to the locations searched by an FBI-led team that came here in September looking for traces of American journalist Austin Tice — more than a decade after he disappeared.

The American team was hard to miss, arriving in a convoy of armored vehicles. Their objective was two-fold: to search for the place where Tice was last believed to have been held and, if possible, to find his remains.

The US search focused on a facility called the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. It lasted less than three days. On September 9, Israel launched its explosive attack on Qatar and the delegation abruptly left.