The daughter of ISIS victim David Haines has vowed she will continue the search to find his body – more than 10 years after he was killed by the terrorist group.
David, a 44-year-old aid worker, was murdered by members of the group in Syria in September 2014, after having been abducted in March 2013.
Bethany Haines, his daughter, will deliver a eulogy at a special service held in his memory today. And she says she will “stop at nothing” to bring him home.
The memorial service will be held at a church in Perth, where David once helped run a Cub Scout troop. She says it will include a slideshow of photos of him and other hostages taken by ISIS.
She says the snaps show them in a way “they should be remembered” as real people, rather than “as images in a stark desert in an orange jumpsuit“.
The Mirror reports Bethany explained: “I think the first thing anyone would ever see with my dad is that he’s a family man and he stands by his family.
“I think he would have really loved to meet my son and I could imagine the amazing bond they would have had – he was the one that would make everyone laugh.”
As well as a reading of the song ‘When Tomorrow Starts Without Me’, she also plans to include a passage from the Quran, as she wanted to show that she and her family believe that the ISIS men who committed the atrocities “had no connection to Islam”.
One person she is not expecting to see at the memorial is uncle Mike Haines, with whom she says she “doesn’t have a relationship” – though she says the service will be open to all, and that he’s welcome to come if he wants.
Mike, who set up a charity in the years that followed his brother’s death, told the Mirror in September that he didn’t need to locate his brother’s body “to find closure”.
But for Bethany, the ongoing search is about doing right by her dad and future generations of her family, including her own son. Explaining the “difference in opinion” between her and Mike, she said: “I think a lot of people say this who’ve gone through grief.
“There isn’t really any closure, and it’s always going to be an ongoing thing. There’s only ways to kind of lessen the pain. Even when someone dies in normal circumstances it’s always going to be with you.
“The one thing I would say about our difference in opinions is I find it hard to believe he would give up on something that he’s never put any work towards in terms of locating remains.
“I’ve done so much research into it. I have notebooks of about 500 pages full of what happened when it happened, potential locations – it’s always been a top priority and it always will be.
“It’ll never stop for me because, the way I see it, if my dad and I had traded positions and I was in that situation, he would stop at nothing to bring me home. The least I can do is pay that respect back.
“There can be weeks and weeks, even months, that we don’t get any kind of leads at all. And then it takes one conversation and you have something.”
“I want to be able to give my son answers. I want to be able to say, you know what? This proves the hard work that you do can get results, and you never give up on family.
“We didn’t manage to save him, which was the ultimate goal, but the least I can do is bring him home to rest.” She said she “had hoped to get across there this year” to resume the search in person.
But this is now unlikely due to the intensifying conflicts in the Middle East – so she is instead aiming for the “end of next year”. The search is complicated by ongoing criminal trials surrounding the terror group.
But despite this she says her mission is “not going to stop” and she believes the US government is “really committed to helping as well”.
Marking the poignant ten year anniversary of David’s death is not just about her dad, she told the Mirror, but honouring the memory of all the aid workers and hostages killed by ISIS.
Though the general perception is that ISIS was a problem of the 2010s, the threat they pose has never gone away, she says – and for the families of those whose bodies were never found, the pain inflicted remains very much with them every day.
“The situation with ISIS as a whole is seen as something of the past and it’s very much something that’s still presently ongoing – the group’s evolved and you’ve got things like ISIS-K emerging.
“There’s still plenty of ISIS attacks going on in the Middle East and people aren’t aware of that. They think it’s done and done, and that the good guys won.
“But it just doesn’t work like that, unfortunately, and there’s still a lot of work to go and there’s still, unfortunately, many, probably going to be many more victims – especially over in Syria and Iraq, where they really are suffering from it.”
The attack at Moscow’s Crocus Hall in March which left 145 people dead showed the battle against the terror group is “certainly not over” and they “still have a lot of capability to do a lot of harm”, she said.
Though she continues searching for answers after more than a decade, Bethany also wants people to remember why her dad and his compatriots were over in Syria, and not just the way they died.
She reflected: “My dad would want something positive to come out of this. He wouldn’t want people dwelling on the negatives or why didn’t we do this, why didn’t we save him, things like that.
“He would want something positive to come out of that, and if that means we can locate him, and not only him, the other hostages as well, then you know he would.
“He would want me to help in any way possible, and that includes the other families. It’s not just him for me, it’s all of them.” The former RAF engineer was forced to write a letter urging his parents to raise £100million to secure his release while in captivity.
An American attempt to rescue him alongside other hostages in July 2014 failed, and just a few weeks later a terrifying video was released by ISIS showing his final moments before he was beheaded.
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