Latest news with #Radio4
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Missing reporter Austin Tice detained by Assad regime, documents show
June 2 (UPI) -- Missing American journalist Austin Tice was imprisoned by the regime of the since-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012 with his whereabouts now not known, according to top secret intelligence files uncovered by the BBC. Former Syrian officials also have confirmed Tice's detention to the BBC. The material was part of a BBC investigation more than one year ago for a Radio 4 podcast series in accompanying a Syrian investigator to an intelligence facility. The Assad regime had denied they had imprisoned him, and didn't know where he was. The U.S. government believes he had been held by the Syrian government. Tice was a freelance journalist, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a law student at Georgetown University. He had gone to Syria to report on the civil war. Tice vanished near the Syrian capital of Damascus in August 2012, just days after his 31st birthday. About seven weeks later, a video posted online showed him blindfolded and with his hands bound. He was also forced to recite an Islamic declaration of faith by armed men. U.S. officials and analysts doubt he was abducted by a jihadist group and the scene "may have been staged." Instead, Tice allegedly was held by members of a paramilitary force loyal to Assad called the National Defence Forces. The files, which are labeled "Austin Tice," include communication from different branches of Syrian intelligence. Law enforcement verified their authenticity. In one "top secret" communication, he was held in a detention facility in Damascus in 2012. A Syrian official confirmed to the BBC he was there until at least February 2013. The BBC reported Tice briefly escaped by squeezing through a window in his cell, but he was later recaptured. Tice had developed stomach issues from a viral infection. A man who visited the facility told the BBC that Tice "looked sad, and that the joy had gone from his face." A former member of the NDF told the BBC that Tice was a "card" that could be played in diplomatic negotiations with the United States. After Assad's ouster in December 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden and mother, Debra Tice, said they believed he was alive. She said he was "treated well," according to a "significant source." Rebel forces stormed his regime-run jails in Damascus and other Syrian regions and freed them. Tice was not among them. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has registered 35,000 cases of people who have gone missing in Syria in the past 13 years. Syria's Network for Human Rights put the number of Syrians "in forced disappearance" at 80,000 to 85,000 killed under torture in Assad's detention centers. Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria's prisons since Assad's ouster, according to human rights network. On May 14, Trump met with the Syrian Arab Republic's new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Trump told reporters, "Austin has not been seen in many, many years," and gave no other details.
Miami Herald
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Missing reporter Austin Tice detained by Assad regime, documents show
June 2 (UPI) -- Missing American journalist Austin Tice was imprisoned by the regime of the since-deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012 with his whereabouts now not known, according to top secret intelligence files uncovered by the BBC. Former Syrian officials also have confirmed Tice's detention to the BBC. The material was part of a BBC investigation more than one year ago for a Radio 4 podcast series in accompanying a Syrian investigator to an intelligence facility. The Assad regime had denied they had imprisoned him, and didn't know where he was. The U.S. government believes he had been held by the Syrian government. Tice was a freelance journalist, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a law student at Georgetown University. He had gone to Syria to report on the civil war. Tice vanished near the Syrian capital of Damascus in August 2012, just days after his 31st birthday. About seven weeks later, a video posted online showed him blindfolded and with his hands bound. He was also forced to recite an Islamic declaration of faith by armed men. U.S. officials and analysts doubt he was abducted by a jihadist group and the scene "may have been staged." Instead, Tice allegedly was held by members of a paramilitary force loyal to Assad called the National Defence Forces. The files, which are labeled "Austin Tice," include communication from different branches of Syrian intelligence. Law enforcement verified their authenticity. In one "top secret" communication, he was held in a detention facility in Damascus in 2012. A Syrian official confirmed to the BBC he was there until at least February 2013. The BBC reported Tice briefly escaped by squeezing through a window in his cell, but he was later recaptured. Tice had developed stomach issues from a viral infection. A man who visited the facility told the BBC that Tice "looked sad, and that the joy had gone from his face." A former member of the NDF told the BBC that Tice was a "card" that could be played in diplomatic negotiations with the United States. After Assad's ouster in December 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden and mother, Debra Tice, said they believed he was alive. She said he was "treated well," according to a "significant source." Rebel forces stormed his regime-run jails in Damascus and other Syrian regions and freed them. Tice was not among them. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it has registered 35,000 cases of people who have gone missing in Syria in the past 13 years. Syria's Network for Human Rights put the number of Syrians "in forced disappearance" at 80,000 to 85,000 killed under torture in Assad's detention centers. Only 33,000 detainees have been found and freed from Syria's prisons since Assad's ouster, according to human rights network. On May 14, Trump met with the Syrian Arab Republic's new president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Trump told reporters, "Austin has not been seen in many, many years," and gave no other details. Copyright 2025 UPI News Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Watch live: Starmer launches plan to ready UK for war as he warns of Russia threat
Watch live as Sir Keir Starmer launches the landmark Strategic Defence Review in Glasgow, unveiling new measures as the country moves to 'warfighting readiness'. The prime minister will announce that the UK plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines which will replace the current fleet from the late 2030s onwards, during his speech on Monday (2 June). He is also expected to confirm that £15billion will be spent on its nuclear warhead programme. The review, led by former Labour defence secretary Lord Roberston, will make an 60 additional recommendations, which the Labour government is expected to agree to in full. Speaking on BBC's Radio 4's Today programme on Monday (2 June), Sir Keir could not rule out the possibility of sending forces to Nato's eastern border. Asked by Nick Robinson if British troops could be sent 'risk their lives' and 'possibly die', the prime minister said he 'hopes not', though stressed the only way to stop this was to 'prepare'. On Sunday (1 June), German's chief of Defence, General Carsten Breuer, told the broadcaster that Russia would attack again within the next four years. Sir Keir also said earlier that while he wants to reach spending of 3% of GDP on defence, he would not 'indulge in the fantasy politics of simply plucking dates from the air'.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Watch live: Starmer launches plan to ready UK for war as he warns of Russia threat
Watch live as Sir Keir Starmer launches the landmark Strategic Defence Review in Glasgow, unveiling new measures as the country moves to 'warfighting readiness'. The prime minister will announce that the UK plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines which will replace the current fleet from the late 2030s onwards, during his speech on Monday (2 June). He is also expected to confirm that £15billion will be spent on its nuclear warhead programme. The review, led by former Labour defence secretary Lord Roberston, will make an 60 additional recommendations, which the Labour government is expected to agree to in full. Speaking on BBC's Radio 4's Today programme on Monday (2 June), Sir Keir could not rule out the possibility of sending forces to Nato's eastern border. Asked by Nick Robinson if British troops could be sent 'risk their lives' and 'possibly die', the prime minister said he 'hopes not', though stressed the only way to stop this was to 'prepare'. On Sunday (1 June), German's chief of Defence, General Carsten Breuer, told the broadcaster that Russia would attack again within the next four years. Sir Keir also said earlier that while he wants to reach spending of 3% of GDP on defence, he would not 'indulge in the fantasy politics of simply plucking dates from the air'.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I'm over knife attack,' says Salman Rushdie
Sir Salman Rushdie says he has moved on from the knife attack which has seen his attacker jailed for attempted murder. Hadi Matar, 27, was sentenced to 25 years last month after repeatedly stabbing Sir Salman on a New York lecture stage in 2022. Sir Salman, who has a new book out later this year, told the Hay Festival that an "important moment" came for him when he and his wife Eliza "went back to the scene of the crime to show myself I could stand up where I fell down". "It will be nice to talk about fiction again because ever since the attack, really the only thing anybody's wanted to talk about is the attack, but I'm over it." Sir Salman recently told Radio 4's Today programme that he was "pleased" the man who tried to kill him had received the maximum possible prison sentence. The Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses writer was left with life-changing injuries after the incident - he is now blind in one eye, has damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm. Last year, Sir Salman published a book titled Knife reflecting on the event, which he has described as "my way of fighting back". The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman's controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. In November, the author will publish a short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction to be written since the stabbing. Security was tight for Sir Salman's event, with sniffer dogs present and bag checks leading to a 15-minute delay. He waved at the audience as he entered the stage and humbly gestured to them to stop applauding before joking that: "I can't see everyone - but I can hear them." He said he was feeling "excellent" although there "were bits of me that I'm annoyed about, like not having a right eye. But on the whole, I've been very fortunate and I'm in better shape that maybe I would have expected." In a wide-ranging discussion, Sir Salman also touched on US politics, declaring that "America was not in great shape". In an apparent reference to President Donald Trump, Sir Salman spoke about "the moment of hope, that image of Barack and Michelle Obama walking down the mall in DC with the crowds around them... people dancing in the streets in New York. And to go from that to the orange moment that we live in, it's, let's just say, disappointing. But he said he was still positive about the future. "I think I suffer from the optimism disease... I can't help thinking somehow it will be alright." Speaking about free speech, he said "it means tolerating people who say things you don't like". He recalled a time when a film "in which I was the villain", made around the time of the uproar over Satanic Verses, was not classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) "because it was in a hundred ways defamatory" but he asked them to allow its release. "So they gave it a certificate... and nobody went, you know why? Lousy movie. And it taught me a lesson. Let it out and trust the audience. And that's still my view. "I think we do live in a moment when people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of. That's a very slippery slope" and warned young people "to think about it." When asked about the effect of AI on authors, Sir Salman said: "I don't have Chat GPT... I try very hard to pretend it doesn't exist. Someone asked it to write a couple of hundred words like me... it was terrible. And it has no sense of humour." Despite being considered one of the greatest living writers, Sir Salman joked that authors "don't even have that much money... except the two of us (him and host Erica Wagner) and those who write about child wizards... the Taylor Swift of literature," referring to JK Rowling. "Good on her." Rushdie 'pleased' with attacker's maximum sentence Salman Rushdie to release first fiction since stabbing Salman Rushdie: Losing an eye upsets me every day Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is writing about rich people again Jacqueline Wilson says she wouldn't return to Tracy Beaker as an adult
