12 • The Sunday Times MagazineA
n 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 werebeaten 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 CapitolMike recalls the phone call informing
him David had been beheaded: “I took
my mum’s hands and told her that her
son could not be hurt any more”
From top: Mike Haines, right, with his brother, David, in the 1990s; Mike delivers
his message of unity at Al-Hikmah School for Muslim boys in Luton, 2017