Humanitarian aid worker beheaded by “Islamic State”

A video purporting to show the beheading of British aid worker David Cawthorne Haines was released Saturday. Vowing justice for the murdered man, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron says his killing by extremist group the Islamic State is “an act of pure evil.”

Calling David Haines a “British hero” who was an innocent in the fighting that has consumed much of Syria and swaths of Iraq, Cameron said, “We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice.”

Haines, 44, had spent much of the last 15 years working for relief agencies. Before he was kidnapped in Syria in the spring of 2013, he had worked with the U.N. and several charitable agencies in the Balkans, South Sudan, and Libya. He was also a husband and the father of two daughters, ages 17 and 4.

“David was like so very many of us, just another bloke,” his brother, Mike, said in a statement released Saturday, in which he describes how his brother dedicated himself to humanitarian work after leaving Britain’s Royal Air Force.

[NPR]

This entry was posted in Humanitarian Aid by Grant Montgomery.