David Haines was beheaded by Isis in 2014. Now his torturers are being brought to justice. Matthew Campbell joins his brother, Mike, and other victims' families for the trial.
An unusual meeting is beginning at the British embassy in Washington. At one end of a conference table sits Mike Haines, from Dundee, talking about his childhood. Pictures of him and his younger brother, David, appear on a screen — in a bath as toddlers, playing in the garden, clambering on their father's back.
Haines, 55, is haunted by the tragic fate of his sibling and "best friend", an aid worker who, in 2013, was in Syria assessing how to help refugees near Aleppo when he was kidnapped by an Islamic State jihadist group, then murdered after 18 months in captivity. He recalls a phone call late one night informing him that David had been beheaded.
"I took my mum's hands and told her that her son could not be hurt any more," he tells the embassy employees seated around the table. Dozens more British consular officials across the country are watching remotely.
At first he wanted revenge. The murderers, a group of extremists from Britain known to their captives as "the Beatles" because of their accents, had made gruesome propaganda videos of the killings: their helpless victims dressed in orange jumpsuits as the black-clad executioners readied to cut their throats. The savagery appalled millions around the world. The jihadists, who grew up in London and travelled to Syria to volunteer for Isis, became involved in more than 20 beheadings, according to US authorities.
Then Haines had an "epiphany" — hating the jihadists was what they wanted: "If we let them bring hate into our lives, they succeed. If we hate, they win."
The former Royal Air Force engineer — his brother had also served for a while in the RAF — is a commanding presence, a burly, barrel-chested figure in a three-piece suit with two "veteran" badges pinned to his waistcoat. Yet there is also something vulnerable about him: he chokes up often as he reminisces about his brother, pausing to take deep breaths before continuing. And he likes hugs.
He has delivered the same talk to British schoolchildren, in pupil referral units, mosques and churches, hoping his refusal to give in to hatred will inspire others to combat it in their communities. People often come up to him afterwards to try to console him. The Pope put an arm around him when Haines wept at their meeting in 2015.
I first met Haines in 2018, when I accompanied him to Luton on one of his speaking tours. I was impressed by how he had turned his sorrow into something positive, setting up an education charity called Global Acts of Unity in honour of his brother.
His brother's executioner, Mohammed Emwazi, known as "Jihadi John", escaped courtroom justice: he was killed in an American drone strike in November 2015. But Alexanda Kotey, another of the so-called Beatles, was captured in Syria, sent to the US and put on trial in Alexandria, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington. I have followed Haines here to witness it. I wonder how he will cope with his first glimpse of an accomplice in his brother's torture and murder.
David and the other hostages were beaten and waterboarded by this man. On one occasion Kotey forced them to fight each other in what he called a "royal rumble", warning that the losers would be punished.
The visit to America has already prompted new considerations for Haines. Earlier that morning he had been invited on a tour with the FBI, which has a museum dedicated to the 9/11 terror attacks. On display are remnants of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers tried to overpower the hijackers steering it towards the US Capitol building or the White House. It made Haines think that, like the passengers on that plane, his brother probably knew he was doomed: the British and US governments had made clear they were not going to pay ransom to terrorists.
Yet even in the most desperate situations, there is still hope. "As an ex-forces person, David would have known that the SAS were trying to get him out," Haines says. "He would have known there was a chance of being rescued." A mission was eventually mounted by American special forces but Isis had moved the hostages and it failed.
Hopes that David might be freed were further dashed when James Foley and Steven Sotloff, American journalists captured by Isis, were executed in August and September 2014. In the video of Sotloff's beheading, David, who was the next western hostage to die, can be seen in the background watching in horror. "That's the face I see in the dark hours," Haines says, "when sleep will not come."
His brother had grown up often getting into scrapes. On camping trips in Scotland when they were young, their parents would sometimes attach David to a pole with a leash. "Otherwise, he would just wander off," Haines recalls.
When they were a bit older, the boys got into trouble for shoplifting. The "local bobby" was summoned to the sweet shop, Haines recalls. "It was, like, 'You two are in deep trouble. Come with me.' He shut us in the cells and left us there. It was only 15 minutes or so but it felt like years. He taught us a brilliant lesson … I never shoplifted again and I know David didn't."
They enjoyed sport and music. But whereas Haines had to put in hours of practice at cricket and the guitar, David did it all with the nonchalant ease of the naturally gifted. "He could have done anything he wanted," Haines says. He was also more successful with the girls.
The brothers followed their father into the RAF, but David found that he was more interested in humanitarian work. He got a job with Acted, a non-governmental French aid agency. "His objective was to help people in need. He's a true hero," Haines says.
Haines also left the RAF and became a psychiatric nurse. One day he was attacked by one of his patients, causing a severe injury to his leg that has required several operations and still causes him considerable pain, forcing him to walk with a stick.
By that time he had separated from the mother of his two children and met Vanessa, now 50, a logistics supply manager. After the leg injury "Vanessa said, 'Why don't you stay at mine? You'll only have one flight of stairs,' " he recalls. Then came David's kidnapping. A police protection unit moved into the flat with them in case Haines was contacted by the kidnappers. "At first they were getting carry-outs and I'd say, 'That's crap, let me cook for you.' "
Other European hostages were freed, apparently after their governments paid millions in ransom money. But the Haines brothers agreed with the British government's policy of not paying terrorists. Before David went to Syria they had discussed in detail all the things that could go wrong over a bottle of brandy. Kidnapping was high on the list. David told Mike, "If you ever pay even one pound in ransom, you'll never see me again" — meaning he would be so angry he would not talk to his brother.
"I still agree with the government policy," Haines says. "Do I think other countries are wrong to get their people out and pay money? Tough one. It's a decision for countries and their leaders and not for me."
The death of "Jihadi John" brought little relief to Haines. But he hopes seeing Kotey in the dock might bring him some peace. "My biggest fear is that I'll feel hate for him," he says, as we wait for our Uber back to the hotel.
Judge Thomas Ellis offers a remarkably cheerful greeting to the bearded man in a green prison jumpsuit in a courtroom the next morning. "Good morning, Mr Kotey," he says. Haines peers through thick spectacles at the accused. "That's my first glimpse of him. I'm glad it's in front of a judge," he tells me.
We are sitting on benches that, bizarrely, resemble church pews. In the row in front of us are other members of the Haines clan — David's two daughters, Bethany, 24, and Athea, 11. Athea's mother, Dragana Prodanovic Haines, David's second wife, is already in tears. Haines leans forward to comfort her. "This is the day we shut the jail doors on them and they stop being in our lives," he whispers.
Kotey, 38, originally from Paddington, London, has admitted five charges of hostage-taking and three terrorist conspiracy charges. He sits yards away, massaging his bushy black beard. He is being tried in the US because four of those killed by "the Beatles" were American.
Another of the kidnap gang, El Shafee Elsheikh, 33, also radicalised in London, sits nearby: he has been found guilty of lethal hostage-taking and conspiracy to commit murder, and is to be sentenced separately in August. He has been summoned to listen to the "impact statements" by victims' family members so they do not have to return to deliver them again in August.
The man suspected of being the fourth Beatle, Aine Davis, is absent: he was arrested in Turkey, convicted there of being a senior member of a terrorist organisation and sentenced in 2017 to seven and a half years in jail.
The families' impact statements are painful to hear. "It has affected my life in so many ways," says Athea, who was only four when her father was killed. She bursts into tears. Her mother, standing next to her, wraps her in her arms. "I only have a few memories of my dad," Athea sobs into the microphone. "Sometimes I get sad when I see my friends laughing and playing with their dads. That's something I'll never have a chance to do again."
Bethany, the elder daughter, describes how her life has been ruined. She suffers from PTSD and depression. Her father, she says, was "dumped like a bag of rubbish" in a mass grave near Raqqa.
Mike Haines sits down to make his statement — his leg has been playing up after the long flight from London. "My brother's murder inflicted more pain on us than I can put into words," he says, "and the after-effects are still with us today — our lives will never be the same again."
He believes his parents, Mary and Chris, were also victims, their deaths hastened by the tragedy of losing their son. His mother "gave up on life", Haines says. She died from cancer in 2015, a year after David's death, aged 81. Her husband died of pneumonia in 2017, his dementia made worse by the stress.
But he concludes on a positive note, telling the two Beatles, "You no longer have any power over me and mine." He adds: "I forgive you."
I notice Bethany grimace. She does not appear to agree with her uncle. "To get forgiveness you have to ask for forgiveness," she said in her statement. "Neither of these men have expressed one ounce of remorse for their actions."
Lucy Henning, daughter of Alan Henning, another British aid worker beheaded by the Beatles, tells the court how she had stumbled on the video of her father's execution one day on Instagram. She had kept blaming herself for his death — for example, she sometimes used to wonder if he would have gone to Syria in 2014 "if I wasn't such a moody daughter".
Then Marsha Mueller, mother of Kayla, an American aid worker and the youngest of the western hostages held by the Beatles, gets up to speak. "I go to bed every night thinking of her," she says. Her daughter was repeatedly raped by the Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who later died after detonating a suicide vest as American troops closed in on him. Kayla's fate is unknown. "We don't want her to be forgotten," says her mother. "She was all, my everything."
Judge Ellis wipes a tear from his eye. The statements, he says, are "exceptionally moving". He praises the victims, saying they "showed what is great in the life of this country. Doing the right thing when no one was looking. They were not self-absorbed people. They did things for others."
He says he is proud — "and you should be too" — of the proceedings. The defendants had been given a highly competent legal defence team. "This was a fair trial, not revenge," he adds.
He sentences Kotey to eight terms of life in prison before concluding, in the same jaunty tone with which he began, "I wish you well, Mr Kotey." Bethany rushes up to the convict as he is led out, exclaiming: "I hope you go rot in hell." As part of an agreement between the US and UK, the death penalty had been ruled out.
Haines stands outside the Virginia court later. "Today is a victory," he tells the assembled press. "I have learnt of the power of forgiveness. Terrorism has claimed many lives, I won't let it claim my soul as well."
Back at their hotel that evening the British and American families gather for drinks and dinner. Many of them seem relieved that the day is over.
At the bar I meet Carl Mueller, 70, father of Kayla, clutching a glass of beer. "We belong to one of the only clubs that nobody wants to be a member of," he says with a bitter laugh, explaining how the relatives of slain Isis hostages have bonded through loss and suffering to form their own mutual support group.
In court earlier, Mueller, from Arizona, had described how the ordeal had killed his faith in God and America's government. He had added that seeing justice at work, however, had restored his confidence in government. But what about his faith?
"I used to go out and pray, I'd stand under the moon and say, 'Take me instead,' " he replies. "Now I wonder what sort of a God could allow this to happen to a young woman, who only wanted to do good in the world, to let her be abused and tortured in this way?"
On the other side of the room, Bethany Haines has been talking to a group of family liaison officers from the British police who have accompanied the Haines and Henning families from the UK. When I walk over she tells me how difficult it has been explaining to her six-year-old son what happened to her father.
"I had to tell him that my daddy was killed by some really bad men and that Mummy is going to bring them to justice. Each time I see him, he asks, 'Mum, have you put the baddies in court yet?' "
As part of a plea bargain, Kotey may spend 15 years in jail in the US and then be allowed to serve the rest of his sentence in the UK. Although he has shown no remorse he has offered to meet family members, say his lawyers. He is hoping to avoid being sent to a notorious maximum security prison in Colorado where inmates are kept in isolation.
Bethany has been given a date to meet Kotey in August — she is hoping to find David's remains: "That man may have information," she says. The Muellers, too, have agreed to a meeting, desperate to discover how their daughter died.
Haines, by contrast, is uncertain whether he wants a face-to-face encounter with one of his brother's torturers. "I'm very much in two minds," he says when I join him, Dragana and Athea for dinner.
"Of course I have all sorts of questions. But that black part of me that's been a part of my life since David was taken — that's gone, and I worry that meeting Kotey would give them some hold over me again."
Dragana is similarly divided. She regrets having cried into the microphone during her statement earlier that day. "I wanted to be composed," she says. "But he set me off by fiddling with his beard, I wanted to say, 'Stop it, what do you think this is?' "
She had explained to the court how hard it was to tell Athea "why Daddy wasn't Skyping us any more", adding: "I did not want to tell her what had happened to her daddy. I tried to make her life as normal as possible under the circumstances. But they stole my daughter's happy childhood."
I ask her how she and David met. "I saw these wonderful two blue eyes looking at me and I was speechless," she says, recalling their first encounter in Croatia in 1998, when David was assisting in the country's postwar reconstruction. "When he went back to Scotland, he was sending me 20 messages a minute," she recalls. "When he got back to Croatia, he moved in with me."
She puts an arm around her daughter. "Now I have my little baby with me," she says, cuddling her. "She's the reason I'm still around." Athea, said to take after David, is gazing up at her mother with a lowered head and raised eyebrows. "When she looks at me like this, I know who's looking at me."
Haines erupts with a bellow of laughter: "Oh no, that look! My God! That's definitely David."
The next morning I find Haines eating breakfast alone in the hotel lobby. We are soon joined by Dragana and Athea. Bethany is sitting at the next table with Paula and Ed Kassig, the parents of Peter, an American aid worker who was beheaded aged 26. At another table are the Muellers.
The British and American families share a WhatsApp group, but until recently had never met. Like Mueller, Haines refers with a laugh to the club to which no one wants to belong — a popular joke among members — and whose support has proved invaluable to him.
"All the feelings that you feel as a single person — the anger, the love, the loss — everything becomes much bigger and not like a weight on your shoulders but with many hands holding it. And for me, that does help."
Ed Kassig wanders over to say goodbye: he and Paula are heading home. Kassig thanks Haines for his support. "The only reason we're still standing is this …" His voice trails off as he takes in all the other family members with a gesture of his arm.
Haines, for his part, may be back in August. He hopes to do a tour of American schools to combat one of the national scourges — not Islamic radicalisation but racial hatred. "In the end," he says, "it's the same message."
Written by: Matthew Campbell
© The Times of London
