David Haines

On 19 May 2019, his daughter Bethany vowed to go to Syria to retrieve her father's body. She had decided to launch a campaign & appeal to anyone who may have information about her father's remains. She has also befriended freed captive Motka who was with her father.

On 22 October 2016, a memorial for David Haines was unveiled in a garden at Perth railway station. It was dedicated by former colleagues at Abellio ScotRail.

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. The individual was shown with Jihadi John and was declared to be the next possible victim of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/ISIS). At the end of the Steven Sotloff beheading video, Jihadi John is shown holding a named British humanitarian aid worker by his orange jumpsuit saying "We take this opportunity to warn those governments that enter this evil alliance of America against ISIL to back off and leave our people alone."

A video of the lead up and aftermath of Haines' beheading, entitled "A Message to the Allies of America", was released by ISIL on 13 September 2014. The video, following a similar format to the ones for Foley and Sotloff, started with a clip of a press statement by Prime Minister Cameron followed by a title screen. It then showed Haines delivering a prepared speech. Next, the executioner makes a statement, then puts his knife to Haines throat and makes cutting motions as the video fades to black. 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."

Haines was abducted in March 2013 by an unidentified armed gang 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. He was seized along with an Italian aid worker named Federico Motka. Their Syrian translator and driver were not taken. The translator later said that insurgents shot out the tyres and surrounded their vehicle on a country road.

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.

David Cawthorne Haines (9 May 1970 – c. 13 September 2014) was a British aid worker who was captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in early 2013 and beheaded in early September 2014.