2025-07-12
38 分钟The Economist. Today on The Weeknd Intelligence, we're bringing you something a little different.
The first episode in a three-part series we've been making for months.
It's a groundbreaking investigation about an American journalist who went missing in Syria over the summer of 2012.
The search for him has lasted more than a decade.
His name, Austin Tice.
Can I just ask you a question in English, and you try to answer in English?
If you can.
Who has the answer to Austin Tice's case?
Who knows what happened to Austin Tice?
For the past six months, the economist's Middle East correspondent, Gareth Brown,
has been on Austin's trail, trying to find out who took him,
why they held on to him,
and what Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad knew about the American detained in his country.
It's an attempt to shed some light on a decade of darkness in one of the most mystifying and oppressive dictatorships of the modern era.
A story that could only be reported since December 2024,
when Syrians finally got their freedom and the state's secrets began to unravel.
I'll hand over to Gareth.
On December the 8th last year, rebel fighters seized the Syrian capital.
Their advance into Damascus after 13 years of revolution stunned the world.
The country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was finally gone.