File photo: Alan Henning (Associated Press)
Moved by the plight of the Syrian people, a middle-aged taxi driver from Manchester, England, stood on street corners to raise money for an ambulance. In December, the man, Alan Henning, skipped Christmas with his family to become the sole non-Muslim on an aid convoy traveling to northern Syria, only to be abducted within 30 minutes of crossing into the war-ravaged country.
On Friday, the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State released a graphic video of his beheading.
The militants killed the 47-year-old aid worker over the protests of leading Muslim clerics - including one of the top al-Qaida theorists - making it clear that Islamic State is so extreme it cannot be reined in even by the men who helped shape the ideology of Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization.
"Hi, I am Alan Henning," the aid worker is forced to say in the moments before his death. "Because of our Parliament's decision to attack the Islamic State, I - as a member of the British public - will now pay the price for that decision," he says in the 1 minute, 11 second clip, which was uploaded to YouTube on Friday afternoon.
He is shown wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling in a rocky landscape, in the same pose as the three other Western hostages killed in the same manner in roughly two-week intervals since August. After the camera pans over the dead body, the black-clad executioner shows a man whom the militants identify as their next victim: an American aid worker, Peter Kassig, a former Army Ranger, who founded an organization that provides medical care in Syria, according to a statement from his family.
Holding him by the scruff of his neck, the masked fighter declares: "Obama, you have started your air bombardment in Sham which keeps on striking our people. It is only right that we continue to strike the necks of your people," using a name for a region that includes Syria.
Two weeks ago, residents of Raqqa, in northern Syria, which is where the hostages were believed to be held for most of this year, said they saw Islamic State fighters driving a captive in an orange suit, believed to be Henning - the residents were too far away to identify him - to a hill. It is the same place where the first hostage, the American journalist James Foley, was executed, they said.
One of the cars was "carrying a big TV camera," said a member of an underground activist group, who declined to be identified out of fears for his safety
If the person beheaded Sept. 20 was indeed Henning, it indicates the terrorist group is carrying out its executions weeks before releasing the videos, timing their release for maximum effect. In Henning's case, they appear to have waited until after the start of Britain's airstrikes on the group.
© 2014, The New York Times News Service