Daughter of Islamic State beheading victim to go 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.

David Haines (pictured) was captured and beheaded in 2014 after being held by a four-man terrorist group of Britons dubbed ‘The Beatles’

John Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen known as Jihadi John during an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant propaganda video. Emwazi was killed in an American drone strike in November 2015

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.

Bethany Haines was present in Virginia this week when a U.S. federal judge heard the case against El Shafee Elsheikh, who is standing trial over the deaths of Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Kayla Mueller and Peter Kassig

David Haines (pictured) was a British aid worker kidnapped and beheaded by the ISIS ‘Beatles’ cell when he was just 44, in 2014

Pictured: Bethany Haines when she was a child with father David Haines

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. Pictured: Bethany Haines with father David Haines

Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed ‘The Beatles,’ speak during an interview with The Associated Press at a security center in Syria in 2021

Elsheikh (pictured in a court room sketch on April 1) and The Beatles – so-called because they were all from the UK – are said to have captured 26 hostages between 2012 and 2015 in Syria

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.

While Elsheikh (pictured) 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

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.

The savage ISIS Beatles, including Jihadi John ringleader who shared beheading videos online and killed innocent British aid workers 

Jihadi John

Mohammed Emwazi – Jihadi John

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 beheadings of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning and 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.

He was killed in a Hellfire missile drone strike in Syria in 2015. 

Jihadi Paul

Aine Lesley Davis – Paul

Davis was born Aine Leslie Junior Davis in 1984 to Fay Rodriquez, and is believed to have spent the early years of his childhood in Hammersmith 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 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 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.

Alexanda Kotey

Alexanda Kotey – Ringo 

Kotey, 38, was born to a Ghanaian father and a Greek Cypriot mother and grew up in Shepherd’s Bush, London.

Before his radicalization, 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 is 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.

El Shafee Elsheikh

El Shafee Elsheikh – George  

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.