The mother of American journalist Austin Tice said on Monday she was hopeful that the new administrations in the U.S. and Syria would help her find her missing son, who was taken captive during a reporting trip near Damascus about 12 years ago.

Mother Debra Tice says she has renewed faith in the U.S. government's efforts to locate her son, who has been missing for thirteen years.

The head of an American organization focused on hostage releases says he believes US journalist Austin Tice is still being held in Syria by people loyal to toppled leader Bashar al-Assad. Speaking to Reuters in Damascus,

Debra Tice, mother of missing Marine veteran and American journalist Austin Tice, has returned to Syria to search for her son who was taken captive in August 2012.

Austin Tice, a freelance journalist for outlets including McClatchy, CBS, and The Washington Post, disappeared in Syria on Aug. 14, 2012, shortly after his 31st birthday. He was reportedly stopped at a checkpoint in a Damascus suburb while reporting on Syria’s civil war.

Austin Tice, an American journalist, was abducted in Syria in 2012 and has been missing since. The fall of the Assad regime is a chance to find him.

The mother of US journalist Austin Tice, abducted in Syria while on a reporting trip in 2012 and one of the longest-held American hostages, has returned to the country for the first time in a decade to renew the search for her son.

For the first time in a decade, Debra Tice, the mother of missing American journalist, Austin Tice, returns to Syria to find news of her son.

Austin Tice, a journalist who was kidnapped in Syria in 2012, is "alive" and being "treated well," his mother, Debra Tice, claims.

The deal was struck for Khan Mohammad, a member of the Taliban serving two life sentences in a U.S. prison on 'narco-terrorism charges.'

US officials have expressed concerns that Tice may have been killed in recent Israeli airstrikes or could have suffocated after Bashar al-Assad's forces cut off power to prisons in Damascus before he was overthrow in December by Syrian rebels.