David Cawthorne Haines

David Cawthorne Haines (9 May 1970 – 13 September 2014)

Early life and career Haines was born in East Yorkshire, moving to Perth, Scotland, as a child and prior to his capture resided in Sisak, Croatia, as a father of two. Haines had been an aircraft engineer in the Royal Air Force before turning to work in humanitarian aid in 1999. He helped victims of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Africa and the Middle East. In 2012, he was an unarmed security worker for Nonviolent Peaceforce, a civilian peacekeeping group in South Sudan.

Kidnapping Haines was abducted in March 2013 by an unidentified armed gang affiliated with ISIL while working in a Syrian internally displaced persons (IDP) camp run by the aid group Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED). He was kidnapped near the Atmeh refugee camp near the Turkish border and the Syrian province of Idlib.

Haines' family were ordered by UK Foreign Office not to speak to anybody about the abduction, an instruction that continued even after the abduction became public when Haines appeared in the purported Sotloff execution video that threatened Haines would be the next victim. The UK Foreign Office had also requested the British media to not publish Haines' identity, fearing for his safety. When international press published his name after release of the video, UK media decided to also publish it, with The Independent stating that "no purpose is served by continuing to withhold his name".

Rescue attempt

After the surfacing of the Steven Sotloff execution video, UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond revealed that the aid worker was one of the intended targets of the American rescue mission. The mission failed reportedly because the jihadist group had moved the hostages prior to the arrival of American commandos. Few details about a second rescue attempt were revealed.

Appearance in Steven Sotloff video The abduction of the aid worker came to worldwide attention after being shown at the end of the Steven Sotloff execution video. The video was discovered on 2 September 2014 by SITE Intelligence Group, purportedly ahead of its intended release by Al-Furqan Media Productions. He concluded: "A country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers. If they think we will weaken in the face of their threats, they are wrong. It will have the opposite effect. We will be more forthright in the defence of the values, liberty under the rule of law, freedom, democracy that we hold dear." In the final scene, the executioner is holding the orange jumpsuit of another person, named as British aid worker Alan Henning, saying "If you, Cameron, insist on fighting the Islamic State then you, like your master Obama, will have the blood of your people on your hands." It was dedicated by former colleagues at Abellio ScotRail.