The former Syrian commander who disappeared without the US journalist Austin was shot

A man who is accused of holding responsibility for the maintenance of the missing American journalist Austin Tis claimed that the overthrown President of Syria Bashar Assad had ordered him to be shot, the BBC reported.

Major -General Basa Al Hassan is a former commander of the Republican Guard, who was part of the president Assad’s internal circle.

He was also the Chief of Staff of the National Defense Forces (NDF), a paramilitary group that disclosed BBC investigation was responsible for the maintenance of Mr. Tisa after the kidnapping in 2012.

The opening was made as part of the future podcasa BBC Radio 4 on the disappearance of Austin Tisa.

The American journalist disappeared near the capital of the Syrian capital of Damascus in August 2012, only a few days after his 31st birthday.

He worked as a FRILAR journalist and left Syria when he was abducted.

The fallen regime invariably refused to know about its location – the BBC investigation showed that it was false and that Mr. Tis was conducted in Damascus.

Al -Khasan, subject to sanctions by the UK, EU, Canada and the USA, oversaw the object where Mr. Tis passed.

Earlier this year, he was said to have met with law enforcement agencies at least three times in Lebanon.

Sources claim that at least one of these meetings was at the US Embassy.

During these conversations, he said he told the investigators from the FBI and the CIA that President Assad was now planned to execute the missing American journalist Austin Tis.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the BBC that Al -Khason claimed that he initially tried to dissuade President Assad from the murder of Mr. Tisa, but that he eventually accepted the order and that he had been held.

Al -Khason also supposedly provided possible places for the journalist’s body. The sources familiar with the FBI investigation have stated that the efforts to confirm the validity of Al -Khason’s claims continue, and that the search should happen from the sites where Mr. Tisa’s body may be.

Western intelligence sources, familiar with the details of Al -Khason’s statement that President Assad gave the order to kill Mr. Tisa, skeptical of the fact that he will directly give such an instruction because he is known for the mechanisms for removing himself from such actions.

The BBC accompanied Mr. Tisia’s mother, Debra, to Beirut, when the 13th anniversary of the son’s disappearance is approaching. Upon learning that Bass Al Hassan was talking to US officials, Debu Tis tried to meet with Al -Khasan herself and appealed to the US Embassy for help.

She said the BBC: “I just want to be able to talk to him as a mother and ask him about my son.” Her attempt to meet Al -Hasan was unsuccessful.

Asked about Al -Khason’s claims, she said her feeling was that he “fed the FBI in the story they wanted to hear” to help them close the case.

Deube Tis led a tireless and decisive campaign to bring her son home and remain committed to finding it. She said the BBC: “I am his mother, I still believe that my son is alive and that he would go for free.”

A separate NDF member with the intimate knowledge of Austin Tisis’s detention said, “that the value of Austin understood” and that he is a “map” that can be played in diplomatic negotiations with the United States.

Bass al Hassan was considered one of the most trusted advisers to President Assad. After the collapse of the Syrian regime in December, Mr. Al Hassan fled to Iran.

The sources close to him said the BBC that, being in Iran, Al Hassan called and asked him to come to Lebanon to meet with US officials. It is believed that he is assured that he will not be detained.

Over the years, consistent US presidents have said that Mr. Tis, a former US Marine infantry captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a law law student at Georgetown’s prestigious University in Washington.

In December 2024, then President Joe Biden told reporters in the White House that “we believe he is alive,” and that “we think we can return it, but we have no direct evidence of it.”