DAMASCUS, Syria — The American journalist was held in a makeshift jail controlled by a top Syrian security official, a row of small cells with metal doors off a street in western Damascus. The prisoner had a request for his captors: Could he have soap, a towel, something to read?

Days later, Austin Tice made a desperate bid for freedom. He squeezed his body through the window of his cell and threw the towel over an exterior wall topped with shards of glass.