2. A Black Box

In the chaos after the Syrian regime’s downfall, the hunt for Austin Tice is on. Josh Baker and his fellow investigative journalist Sara Obeidat are in Damascus as bombs fall and gunfights break out. Armed with a list of locations where Austin may have been held, they race across the Syrian capital searching for any sign of him. They find horrifying evidence of detention and torture on an industrial scale. Then, after climbing across a five-storey drop to reach a hidden room, they get a breakthrough — a trove of material about Austin that was never meant to be found.

Archive: Syria News; Al Jazeera; BBC; CBS; Fox; ABC; PBS; Al Arabiya; NBC.

Writer and showrunner: Josh Baker

Investigative producer: Sara Obeidat

Series producer: Simon Maybin

Field producing: Ouday Al Hussein

Additional producing: Lucy Burns

Open source intelligence: Thomas Bordeaux & Gabor Friesen

Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman

Series editor: Clare Fordham

Head of BBC News Long Form Audio: Emma Rippon

BBC Radio 4 commissioning editor: Dan Clarke

NPR producer: Monika Evstatieva

NPR editors: Robert Little & Katie Simon

NPR executive producer for Embedded: Irene Noguchi

BBC World Service commissioning editor: Jon Manel

Composer: Firas Abou Fakher

Additional music: Karim Chehoury

Theme music: Sam Slater

Mix and sound design: Tom Brignell