[5] Tice was previously a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer, serving tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[11] He entered the country in May 2012 and traveled through central Syria, filing battlefield dispatches before arriving in Damascus in late July 2012.

[14] Tice was working as a freelance journalist for McClatchy, The Washington Post, CBS and other media when he was abducted from Darayya, Syria.

RSF partnered with the global advertising agency J. Walter Thompson to prepare a public awareness campaign in order to do everything possible to bring Tice safely home.

[23] In November 2018, Reuters reported that Robert C. O'Brien, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, had called on Russia to "exert whatever influence they have in Syria" to secure Tice's release.

[24][needs update] In December 2018, Tice's parents announced during a press conference that they had received new information that indicated their son was still alive without elaborating further.

[25] In summer 2020, Kash Patel, then White House counterterrorism adviser, travelled secretly to Damascus with Roger Carstens, US hostage negotiator, in an attempt to win the release of Tice.

[31] Reports subsequently emerged that Tice was able to escape from his cell in early 2013 after five months of captivity and was found wandering through the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus.