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

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.

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.

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.

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 mother of missing journalist Austin Tice told NBC News" "Meet the Press" that seeing an American held captive in Damascus after he was freed was "almost like having a rehearsal."

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 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.

HOUSTON — The head of an international aid group for hostages believes Houston freelance journalist Austin Tice is alive. This latest update comes a few weeks after another American, Travis Timmerman, was found in Damascus. Tice was detained at a checkpoint near Damascus in 2012 while covering the civil war in Syria.