UK leader vow over hostage killers
Print Edition
THE Islamic State extremists who have beheaded another Western hostage are deaf to reason and must be destroyed, British Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday, as Muslims worldwide were urged to pray for the victim on one of Islam’s holiest days.
Cameron, speaking after a security briefing at his rural retreat Chequers, said Friday’s slaying of 47-year-old English aid worker Alan Henning demonstrated that Islamic State militants were committed to inflicting horror for horror’s sake.
Asked whether he believed Islamic State fighters would kill more hostages, Cameron said they would have to be hunted down to be stopped. He declined to say whether Britain would extend its involvement in US-led airstrikes on the Islamic State group to Syria, where the hostage killings are believed to have happened.
“The fact that this was a kind, gentle, compassionate and caring man who had simply gone to help others, the fact they could murder him in the way they did, shows what we are dealing with,” Cameron said. “This is going to be our struggle now. ... We must do everything we can to defeat this organization.”
Henning, a taxi driver from the town of Eccles in northwest England, was abducted minutes after his aid convoy entered Syria on December 26.
He was the fourth Western hostage to be killed by Islamic State since mid-August, following two American journalists and another British aid worker.
In their latest video, Henning’s killers linked their action to a vote on September 26 in the British Parliament to deploy the Royal Air Force against Islamic State positions in Iraq, but not Syria.
Muslim leaders across Britain urged worshippers worldwide to pray for Henning and peace in the Middle East as they gathered at mosques to celebrate Eid al-Adha, Islam’s annual “festival of sacrifice.”
“Millions should be praying today for Alan Henning, a good and honorable man,” said Muslim peace activist Shaukat Warraich, speaking outside a mosque in the central English city of Birmingham.
Britain’s former army chief of staff, Lord Dannatt, called for British air power to be deployed in Syria as well as Iraq. “Dealing with half a problem is not going to solve the problem,” Dannatt said.
The video mirrored other beheading videos shot by the Islamic State group, and ended with a militant threatening a 26-year-old American hostage, Peter Kassig.
“Obama, you have started your aerial bombardment of Sham (Syria), which keeps on striking our people, so it is only right that we continue to strike the necks of your people,” the masked militant featured in the video said.
National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden confirmed that Islamic State militants had Kassig.
“We will continue to use every tool at our disposal — military, diplomatic, law enforcement and intelligence — to try to bring Peter home,” Hayden said.
This is the fourth such video released by the Islamic State group. Previous victims were American reporter James Foley, American-Israeli journalist Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines.
According to his military record, Kassig enlisted in the US Army in 2004, served in the 75th Ranger Regiment, was deployed to Iraq in 2007 and medically discharged later that year at the rank of private first class.
His parents, Ed and Paula Kassig, said their son had been working for the relief organization he founded, Special Emergency Response and Assistance when he was captured a year ago on his way to Deir Ezzour in eastern Syria.
On Friday, the father of John Cantlie, a British photojournalist held by the group, appealed for his release in a video.
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