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Dedication to helping others made British hostage IS’s latest victim
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BRITISH aid worker David Haines was a former military man who spent years helping the neediest in warzones, but his dedication led to him becoming the latest hostage to be beheaded by Islamic State militants in Syria.
To his family, the 44-year-old was a loving father, husband and what his brother described yesterday as “just another bloke” who could be the life and soul of the party, but they said he was “most alive” when working in the toughest of circumstances.
Haines, a father of two children, trained with the Royal Air Force and worked with relief agencies in the Balkans, Libya, South Sudan and Syria.
He was working in Syria for Paris-based NGO Acted when he was seized by militants in March 2013, along with an Italian colleague, Federico Motka.
Motka was freed in May but there was no news of Haines until he was threatened in a video released this month showing the beheading of US journalist Steven Sotloff.
It subsequently emerged that Britain tried unsuccessfully to rescue Haines, and as recently as Friday his family had appealed directly to the militants holding him to contact them.
But IS made good on its threat, and Haines has become the third Western hostage to be beheaded in a month.
In a statement, his brother Mike said he had been “murdered in cold blood.” He said he would be “missed terribly,” and recalled a loving childhood growing up with his brother, with holidays in caravans and tents and youthful japes.
“David was like so very many of us, just another bloke,” he said.
He added: “David was a good brother, there when I needed him and absent when I didn’t. I hope that he felt the same way about me.
“He was, in the right mood, the life and soul of the party and on other times the most stubborn irritating pain in the ass. He would probably say the same about me.”
Haines was born in 1970 in Yorkshire in the north of England but moved to Scotland as a child, attending school in Perth.
He worked for the Royal Mail postal service before joining the RAF as an aircraft engineer.
With the military he worked in “various positions covering security and threat assessments in a number of different countries,” according to his online CV.
It was during a posting in the Balkans that he began to turn toward humanitarian work, which he would go on to do in brief bursts between work as a security consultant.
“He helped whoever needed help, regardless of race, creed or religion,” his brother recalled.
“David was most alive and enthusiastic in his humanitarian roles. His joy and anticipation for the work he went to do in Syria is for myself and family the most important element of this whole sad affair.”
He left the RAF and after a stint with railway company ScotRail went to work for German group Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund, which carried out post-war reconstruction in Croatia.
In 2011, he worked in Libya as head of mission for Handicap International, which helps disabled people in poverty and conflict zones.
The following year, he was in South Sudan with the US group Nonviolent Peaceforce, which deploys unarmed civilians as unofficial “peacekeepers” in conflict zones.
It said Haines “saved many people’s lives through his good work,” adding it was “outraged by his brutal murder.”
Haines was married twice, first to his childhood sweetheart Louise. They had a daughter, Bethany, now a teenager.
In 2010 Haines married Dragana Prodanovic, a Croatian woman with whom he had a 4-year-old daughter, Athea.
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