LONDON: The brother of a British man murdered by Daesh members is prepared to travel to the US to give evidence at their trial.
Mike Haines told UK police that he wished to travel if called on to testify at the prosecution of El Shafee Elsheikh and Alex Kotey, two Daesh members originally from London who formed part of a British quartet known as the “Beatles.”
His brother David, an aid worker, was executed in 2014 and his murder was recorded on camera.
Elsheikh and Kotey appeared in court in the US for the first time on Friday, accused of conspiring to murder four US hostages.
They are also suspected of being involved in the deaths of David and another British aid worker, Alan Henning.
Elsheikh and Kotey claim they were only responsible for sending emails demanding ransoms for hostages held by Daesh.
But Mike has said the group never made efforts to respond to him or his family, and had no real intention of releasing US or UK hostages.
Mike added that he and his family only received a letter written by his brother in 2014 on behalf of Daesh, demanding €150 million ($177 million) in ransom.
“If every member of the family had sold everything, we wouldn’t have come close,” he told The Times. “I thought of every different option, even a bank robbery.”
Elsheikh and Kotey arrived in America last week, having been taken into US custody in Iraq in 2019 after their capture by Kurdish forces a year earlier.
Despite what happened to his brother, Mike said he would be prepared to forgive his brother’s murderers should they apologize for their actions.
“I try not to have anger, I try not to have hate. Every day I have a daily battle with hate, but if I do hate, I am not honoring my brother,” he added.
Mike extended the offer of forgiveness to third Beatles member Mohammed Emwazi, known as “Jihadi John,” who was identified as the man who murdered David in his execution video, and who was killed in an airstrike in 2015.
“If Emwazi were to walk through that door and say he was wrong, he was sorry, and he was now against Isis (Daesh), I would shake his hand,” Mike said.
