Daughter of Islamic State beheading victim is going to Syria to find his remains
The daughter of an Islamic State beheading victim is going to Syria to find his remains and hold a memorial.
Bethany Haines, 24, the daughter of British aid worker and IS beheading victim David Haines, is set to travel to Syria in search of his body.
It follows a mysterious phone call from someone who claimed to know where her father’s body is, The Mirror reported.
Mother-of-one Bethany, from Perthshire, Scotland, was just a schoolgirl when infamous terrorist Jihadi John, later identified as Mohammed Emwazi, murdered her father in 2014.
Emwazi was filmed beheading Haines in a killing that shocked the world.
The following year the evil murderer was himself killed in a drone strike.
Bethany previously said she wanted her father’s murderers ‘hung from a tree’.
Since his killing almost a decade ago, Bethany has worked hard to find her father’s body so she can repatriate him ‘so me and my son can properly say goodbye’.
Bethany was in Virginia this week when a U.S. federal judge finally heard the case against El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, who is standing trial over the deaths of Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig.
While Elsheikh has not been charged in America over Mr Haines’ death due to America lacking jurisdiction, he is believed to have participated in the kidnapping, torture and beheading of 27 British, American and other foreign hostages in Syria.
Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, the daughter of Mr Haines – the former RAF engineer and aid worker who was 44 he was captured by ISIS in 2013 and beheaded the following year – said that she never thought Elsheikh would be caught, let alone stand trial.
‘That we have got to this point feels like a miracle,’ she told the newspaper before travelling to Virginia from her home in Perthshire.
The 24-year-old has prepared a victim impact statement which she plans to read in court.
Giving the Telegraph a preview, she said it would say that Elsheikh’s alleged killings had nothing to do with his religion.
‘No matter what you say, this was not about religion, you brutally murdered good and innocent people, and now you have to live with that for the rest of your life,’ Ms Haines plans to tell him, she said.
Ms Haines says that as much as she wants to see Elsheikh see justice, she is also hoping that he will finally reveal the location of her father’s body.
Her letter will implore him to give up the location not for her, but for her son.
‘Don’t do it for me, do it for my son, who can finally say goodbye to his grandad,’ she told the newspaper, reading from her draft.
Elsheikh was one of the members of the ‘ISIS Beatles’ – four British born men who went to Syria to fight for the terrorist group.
When being interrogated by the United States, Elsheikh said that Mohammed Emwazi, known as the infamous ‘Jihadi John’, buried the body of James Foley, but burned that of Steven Sotloff because the ground was too dry.
It is expected that Elsheikh will spend 15 years in a U.S. prison before being extradited to the UK to serve the rest of his jail term.
Over the course of the trial – that will likely last a whole month – 60 witnesses will give evidence.
They are made up of foreign intelligence, other alleged victims and Yazidi sex slaves, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The trial will be the first – and likely the last time a senior member of ISIS stands trial in the West. Others were either killed in Syria or tried in the Middle East.
Source: Daily Mail
