Hostage envoy Roger Carstens traveled to Syria Friday, making the first known U.S. in-person contact with the caretaker government, and seeking help in finding missing American Austin Tice.

We should ask the militants who toppled Bashar al-Assad in Syria what became of missing U.S. reporter Austin Tice and why

The mother of Austin Tice, who was taken captive in Syria in 2012, voiced hope that upheaval in the country will lead to freedom for her son.

We hold Bashar al-Assad and his criminal regime accountable for the consequences of Austin’s disappearance and the pain inflicted on his mother — pain, tears and separation," a spokesman told NBC News.

There are no credible hints of his whereabouts, but also no clear evidence that he is dead, a U.S. official said.

Nongovernmental workers and journalists have scoured prisons for clues about his fate in the absence of an official American presence in the country.

US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said Tuesday that it believes journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts.

Hostage envoy Roger Carstens traveled to Syria Friday, making the first known U.S. in-person contact with the caretaker government, and seeking help in finding missing American Austin Tice.

The recent fall of the Assad regime has infused new hope in the search for Austin Tice, an American detained in Syria for a decade, as prisoners in jails across the country are released, Gustaf Kiland

The scores of prisoners freed after the downfall of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria are giving hope to Debra Tice, mother of the American journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing since being detained in 2012.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has led to the freeing of tens of thousands of prisoners from the country’s brutal and byzantine prison system. Desperate family members continue to search for many more people who went missing since repression of an anti-government uprising triggered a horrific civil war in 2011.