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 The footage on YouTube, highlighted on pro-Islamic State Twitter
feeds, showed a middle-aged man in an orange jumpsuit kneeling next
to a black-clad militant in arid scrubland, similar to past Islamic
State beheading videos of two American journalists and a British aid
worker.
As in previous videos, Henning appears to read from a script before
he is killed. "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.
A male voice with a British accent says, "The blood of David Haines
was on your hands Cameron," in references to the slain aid worker
and to Britain’s prime minister. "Alan Henning will also be
slaughtered, but his blood is on the hands of the British
parliament."
Henning, a 47-year-old taxi driver from Salford in northern England,
was part of an aid convoy taking medical supplies to a hospital in
northwest Syria in December last year when it was stopped by gunmen
and he was abducted.
In response to the video, Cameron said: "The brutal murder of Alan
Henning by ISIL shows just how barbaric and repulsive these
terrorists are. My thoughts and prayers tonight are with Alan's wife
Barbara, their children and all those who loved him.
"Alan had gone to Syria to help get aid to people of all faiths in
their hour of need. We will do all we can to hunt down these
murderers and bring them to justice."
U.S. officials said they had no reason to doubt the authenticity of
the video, titled "Another Message to America and its Allies."
"The United States strongly condemns the brutal murder of United
Kingdom citizen Alan Henning," President Barack Obama said in a
statement.
"Standing together with our U.K. friends and allies, we will work to
bring the perpetrators of Alan's murder – as well as the murders of
Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff and David Haines – to justice," Obama
said, referring to other captives killed by Islamic State militants.
Near the end of the one-minute, 11-second video, the man in black
introduces another hostage identified as American Peter Edward
Kassig. His parents later issued a statement confirming their
26-year-old son had been taken captive while doing humanitarian work
in Syria.
"We ask everyone around the world to pray for the Henning family,
for our son, and for the release of all innocent people being held
hostage in the Middle East and around the globe," Ed and Paula
Kassig of Indianapolis, Indiana, said in the statement.
Kassig had served in the U.S. Army during the Iraq war before being
medically discharged, the family said. Pentagon records show he
spent a year in the army as a Ranger and was deployed to Iraq from
April to July 2007.
After leaving the army, Kassig became an emergency medical
technician and traveled to Lebanon in May 2012, volunteering in
hospitals and treating Palestinian refugees and those fleeing
Syria's nearly four-year civil war, the family added.
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He was detained on Oct. 1, 2013, while traveling to the eastern
Syrian city of Deir al-Zor while working for Special Emergency
Response and Assistance, a non-governmental organization he founded
in late 2012 and based out of southern Turkey to treat refugees
flowing across the border from Syria, his family said.
While in captivity, he converted to Islam and took the name Abdul
Rahman, a family spokeswoman said. "DISGUSTING MURDER"
U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden confirmed
Kassig was being held by Islamic State. "We will continue to use
every tool at our disposal - military, diplomatic, law enforcement
and intelligence – to try to bring Peter home to his family,” she
said.
The beheading of Henning marks the fourth such killing of a
Westerner by Islamic State, which has faced air strikes by U.S.,
British, French and Arab fighter jets since seizing swaths of Iraq
and Syria in waves of sectarian violence.
Earlier on Friday, before the Henning video was posted, a British
Islamic State fighter identified as Abu Saeed al-Britani appeared in
a separate video, urging British Muslims to travel to Syria and Iraq
to join Islamic State.
In the video on YouTube, al-Britani, wearing a camouflage shirt and
what appears to be a cast on his right arm, calls British and U.S.
military forces "cowards" in carrying out airstrikes instead of
putting troops on the ground.
"So send all your forces. Send them all. Send all your reserves.
Send all of your back-ups, for we’ll send them back one by one in
coffins," he said.
Britain, a close U.S. ally, recently announced it was joining a
U.S.-led air assault against the Sunni militant group's targets in
Iraq, after weeks of weighing its options.
Muslim groups across Britain, including some organizations that are
highly critical of British foreign policy and blame Western
interference for fanning the recent crisis in Iraq and Syria, had
called in vain for Henning's release.
Henning's wife Barbara had called him a "a peaceful, selfless man"
and appealed to Islamic State to release him.
Islamic State is believed to be holding fewer than 10 Western
hostages in Syria. The remaining hostages include British journalist
John Cantlie, who has appeared in three Islamic State videos.
(Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Mostafa Hashem in
Cairo; Writing by Jason Szep; Editing by Tom Brown and Ken Wills)
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