WATCH: CNN Journalist Clarissa Ward’s Dramatic Confrontation With the Man Who Held Journalist Austin Tice Captive in Syria

Hidden cameras captured the moment CNN’s chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward came face-to-face with the man long suspected of knowing what happened to her friend, missing journalist Austin Tice, whose disappearance remains one of the most haunting mysteries of the Syrian war.

Tice vanished while reporting on the civil war. Once held in a Damascus military compound, he briefly escaped before being recaptured. After the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime, former President Joe Biden vowed to get Tice back. His fate and location, however, has remained unknown.

Ward’s investigation, followed in a new report released on Tuesday, attempts to go far beyond any previous account of Tice’s disappearance and even includes interviews with former Syrian intelligence officers who said they interrogated the journalist during his captivity.

At one point, however, Ward and her team track down Bassam Al-Hassan, a former military general for Assad who once helped create Syria’s notorious National Defense Forces. He has long been suspected of overseeing Tice’s captivity.

When they find him in a Beirut apartment, Ward and CNN producer Sarah El Sirgany made the decision to knock on Al-Hassan’s door in one of the most striking scenes from the report.

As the pair knock the door, Ward introduces herself: “Hi, how are you? My name is Clarissa Ward, I’m a journalist with CNN. Can I ask you a couple of questions? I’m looking for more information about my friend Austin Tice.”

Looking visibly shaken, Al-Hassan invites the journalists and, according to Ward, “asks over and over again how we found him.”

“I’m not going to tell you how we found out where you are. It’s not important. We’ve been looking for you for a while,” she tells him.

She continues: “We know that you’ve given multiple different stories. Can you just tell me because he was my friend: Is Austin Tice dead?”

“Of course Austin is dead,” the man replies in a low voice. “Austin is dead.”

The man goes on to explain that Assad himself “gave him the order to execute Austin” but claimed the killing was carried out by a subordinate officer, information he claimed to have shared with the FBI.

Ward asks Al-Hassan when Tice died, and he appears to indicate 2013 as he is pressed for an answer. Ward and Sirgany kept hidden cameras rolling as Al-Hassan alternated between defensiveness and remorse.

“I don’t want to protect Bashar al-Assad because he abandoned and left us,” Al-Hassan said. “I don’t want to protect Russia or Iran… This relates to President Bashar only.”

As the pair leaves, the man pauses at the doorway and speaks about Tice’s mother, telling Ward: “I owe her an apology and it upsets me to remember it. Truly. I wish what happened hadn’t happened.”

Speaking about the encounter to Poynter’s Tom Jones, she said:

Al-Hassan was clearly completely shocked that we found him and that element of surprise played in our favor — he invited us into his home and was relatively friendly. We had been warned that he is an incredibly cunning and manipulative man. He went from playing the victim to asking to take our photo to choking up in a space of 20 minutes. Honestly, we were left with the impression that he is not a trustworthy character. At the same time, he seemed sincere when he said that Austin Tice was dead and this was something we heard from almost every single source (and we spoke to dozens of them).

CNN found several FBI sources who said that Al-Hassan failed a polygraph test and reported that multiple sources echoed his claim, though no hard evidence has ever emerged.

Tice’s mother, Debra Tice, has previously dismissed Al-Hassan as a “pathological liar.”

“Austin Tice is alive,” the family said in a statement to CNN. “We look forward to seeing him walk free.”

For Ward, the investigation remains deeply personal and far from over.

“My personal relationship with Austin is what has fueled my determination,” she said. “I still am intent on finding out the precise circumstances around his alleged execution.”

Watch above via CNN.