LONDON: The daughter of slain British aid worker David Haines is set to confront her father’s killer, former Daesh fighter El-Shafee El-Sheikh, in a high-profile court case in the US, The Times has reported.
In 2014, when Bethany Haines was 17, her father, who was working as an aid worker in Syria, was beheaded by a group of Daesh fighters known as “the Beatles.”
The four men, all hailing from the UK, are said to be responsible for almost 30 hostage deaths, including four US citizens and two Britons.
El-Sheikh, dubbed “Jihadi George,” was captured in 2018 along with another member, Alexanda Kotey, and was transferred to the US to stand trial.
Bethany will attend the trial after traveling from Scotland. She told the media that she would demand that El-Sheikh reveal the locations of the bodies of slain hostages, including her father.
“Do it for my son, so that he can finally say goodbye to his grandfather,” she will tell El-Sheikh, according to The Times.
Bethany is set to attend court sessions daily during the trial, which could last up to a month. “I’ve prepared for this for years,” she said. “I want to be able to see him at all times; to see his facial expressions.”
But Bethany doubts that El-Sheikh will show remorse, saying: “He thinks he’s above this all. It’s all beneath him. He even smirked at a witness at an earlier hearing.”
Prosecutors in the US are said to have gathered thousands of pages of evidence relating to El-Sheikh’s activities in Syria.
Criticism of the UK’s anti-terror authorities has also been leveled after it emerged that several of “the Beatles” had been known by authorities before traveling to Syria.
“They totally could have been stopped,” said Bethany. “What’s the point of having a (terrorism watch) list if you are never going to act on it?
The gang carried out several high-profile executions, killing US citizens James Foley and Steven Sotloff. They also kidnapped and tortured 26-year-old Kayla Mueller.
Mohammed Emwazi, dubbed “Jihadi John,” was killed by a US drone strike in 2015. Another member, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey on terror charges.