The brother of British aid worker David Haines says he has given up on searching for his body 10 years after he was beheaded by a member of the notorious ISIS cell known as The Beatles.
Charity worker David, 44, was one of two British citizens and four Americans to be murdered by the Islamist thugs, who cut off his head and broadcast the sickening images online in September 2014.
He had arrived in Syria in March 2013 working for a French aid agency – and had only been in the country for three days when he was kidnapped and held hostage for 18 months, to the agony of his family, including older brother Mike.
After spending years vowing to retrieve his brother’s remains, Mike says he is now at peace with the fact he may never find them.
And the Dundee resident, who has since set up a charity to encourage tolerance and understanding in schools in his brother’s memory, says he has learned to forgive his younger sibling’s killers despite what they have done.
Aid worker David Haines was murdered by ISIS in 2014 after being kidnapped days into his time in Syria as an aid worker
David with his older brother Mike in a photograph taken in the late 1990s. Mike says he has forgiven his brother’s killers
Haines was among a number of Westerners in the Middle East to be kidnapped by ISIS during the terror group’s peak in the early 2010s
Mohammed Emwazi, known by the alias Jihadi John before he was identified, was one of the ISIS ‘Beatles’ who may have killed David Haines
Mike Haines, who now runs a charity promoting tolerance and defiance in the face of hate, says he does not think he will find his brother’s remains
Speaking to the Mirror, Mr Haines said: ‘I don’t need David’s body to find closure. I accept that his remains lie somewhere in the Syrian desert.
‘In finding forgiveness for ISIS I realised I had to accept many things that I can’t change. It is part of the process for me, that allows me to break free of the hold ISIS had over me while I felt hatred for them.’
The four ISIS members known as The Beatles are Mohammed Emwazi, Aine Davis, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh.
Emwazi, known as ‘Jihadi John’ before he was identified, was blown up by an ISIS drone in 2015. All four hailed from London.
Mr Haines and his brother had hailed from Perth, Scotland – 20 miles from where Mike lives now in Dundee – after moving there at a young age from Yorkshire.
Both followed their father into the RAF, where David served as an aircraft engineer before leaving to become an aid worker in 1999 – a career he embraced for more than a decade before making the fateful trip to Syria.
David’s family had been sworn to secrecy after he was kidnapped – but he appeared in a video showing the execution of American journalist Steven Sotloff, in which Emwazi vowed the British man would be killed next, in early September 2014.
A rescue attempt on an unspecified date to retrieve American hostages and David failed – and the barbaric footage was published online.
David is shown in an orange jumpsuit next to his executioner, who is dressed entirely in black and holding a knife.
Seemingly under duress, David tells then-Prime Minister David Cameron that he is being held ‘entirely responsible’ for his death. He is then executed on camera.
His daughter Bethany said Kotey had fingered Emwazi for the execution – and that her father had begged him to ‘make it quick’.
David Haines with his daughter Bethany – who, as an adult, was able to see one of the men who was responsible for her father’s death being sent to prison
El Shafee el-Sheikh and Alexanda Kotey (left and right), two of the four ‘Beatles’ who left the UK to join ISIS
Bethany Haines later revealed her father’s executioners had begged them to ‘make it quick’ when they prepared to execute him
Aine Davis (front of image) is in a British prison after serving time in Turkey for being a member of ISIS
Mr Cameron said following the killing: ‘David Haines was a British hero. The whole country, like his grieving family, can be incredibly proud of what he did and what he stood for in his humanitarian mission.’
Kotey, one of the four Beatles, was jailed for life in the US in April 2022 after being linked to the killings of US citizens. While Haines’ killer has never been identified, one of the four Beatles is believed to have been responsible.
Mike was able to stare Kotey in the eye after being invited by US prosecutors to address one of the men who may be responsible for his brother’s death.
He said of the experience in May 2022: ‘I expected to feel anger, I expected to feel hate. When I faced him it was grim satisfaction that he was in a court of law with his rights held up to the highest degree. It was a sense of closure.’
Elsheikh remains in prison for his acts of terror while Davis was jailed in November 2023 after admitting charges of funding terrorism and possessing a firearm for terrorism purposes.
He had been freed from a Turkish prison in August 2022 after being convicted of being a member of ISIS and arrested immediately upon his return to the UK.
Davis’ wife had been stopped at Heathrow Airport en route to Istanbul in 2014 with 20,000 Euros in large denomination notes – and evidence suggested she was on her way to deliver it to her husband or an associate to fund terrorist activities.
Mike, who is recovering from a stroke he had earlier this year, says he does not hold hate for ISIS – believing that forgiving his brother’s killers gives him power over them.
He added: ‘Do I have hate for Isis? No. Do I hate, even though he’s dead, Jihadi John? No, because he’s faced justice.
‘There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of David. There’s a thing that runs in my family, we say that you never truly die until your footsteps fade away – and David’s steps aren’t fading away.’
ISIS has been largely contained in the years since David’s death, losing its grasp on the Middle East and retreating to pockets of Africa.
Fanatics have been attempting to revive the group – including suspects alleged to have plotted a terrorist attack at a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in the summer.
Mike, however, has previously vowed through the work of his charity Global Acts of Unity not to let hate triumph.
He said in 2022: ‘Every time that we hear of an attack, there is sadness in our hearts, because we know that this club that we belong to has just expanded – that club that nobody wants to be a part of who’ve had family members and loved ones injured, maimed or murdered in an act of terrorism.
‘However, what we have seen over and over and over again is the way that people respond to attacks of terror.
‘What we try to do with Global Acts of Unity is show that if we react with hate, the extremists and terrorists win. And they will not win.’
Who are the ISIS Beatles? The group included ringleader Jihadi John who shared beheading videos
Mohammed Emwazi – Jihadi John
Jihadi John
Mohammed Emwazi was one of the most prominent members of the so-called ISIS Beatles and was regularly seen carrying out executions in their horrific beheading videos.
He took part in the barbaric beheading of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and US humanitarian worker Peter Kassig.
The terrorist, who was born in Kuwait and grew up in Queen’s Park, West London, was charged with 27 counts of murder and five counts of hostage taking in November 2014.
It is believed he was killed in a Hellfire missile drone strike in Syria in 2015.
Aine Lesley Davis – Paul
Jihadi Paul
Born Aine Leslie Junior Davis in 1984 to Fay Rodriquez, ‘Paul’ is believed to have spent the early years of his childhood in Hammersmith, London, where his mother lived.
He was one of 13 children his father had by four different women.
The former tube driver, who has drug-dealing and firearms convictions to his name, converted to Islam while serving time in prison.
In 2014 his wife, Amal el-Wahabi, was convicted of funding terrorism after she persuaded a friend to try and smuggle £16,000 ($21,000) in cash in her underwear to him.
Davis was captured by Turkish security officials in 2015 and was later found guilty of being a senior member of a terrorist organization and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.
In August 2022, Davis was deported from Turkey to the United Kingdom, and a day later – on August 11 – Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service authorised charges against Aine Davis for terrorism offences in 2014.
He is now serving an eight year prison term after admitting charges of funding terrorism and possessing a firearm for terrorism purposes.
Alexanda Kotey – George
Alexanda Kotey
Kotey, 38, was born to a Ghanaian father and a Greek Cypriot mother and grew up in Shepherd’s Bush, West London.
Before his radicalisation, he is thought to have worked as a drug dealer before converting to Islam in his early 20s.
In 2012, he left for Syria where the US claims he was involved in beheadings and known for administering ‘exceptionally cruel torture methods’, including electronic shocks.
He was also accused of acting as an ISIS recruiter who convinced a number of other British extremists to join the terror group.
Kotey was captured in Syria while trying to escape to Turkey in 2018 and was held in a US military center in Iraq.
The British Government wanted him tried in the US, where officials believe there is a more realistic chance of prosecution than in the UK.
He was extradited last year and was charged with a number of terror offences. He pleaded guilty in September 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison, 15 years of which would be spent in the United States and then he would be transferred to the United Kingdom.
El Shafee Elsheikh – Ringo
El Shafee Elsheikh
Born in Sudan, Elsheikh, 33, grew up in West London and is the final member of the four British terrorists who fled to join ISIS.
He has been linked to the killings of a number of hostages after heading to Syria to join the extremist group.
He was captured along with Kotey when they tried to flee to Turkey in 2018 and has since been transported to the US where he now faces charges relating to terrorism and beheading Western hostages.
He initially pleaded not guilty to all charges of kidnap, conspiracy to murder and providing material to support terrorism, but he refused to give evidence. He was found guilty following a trial in April 2022.
He eventually pleaded guilty to all counts and was sentenced to life in prison.
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