WHEN a grizzly video of her father being brutally beheaded by IS terrorists was broadcast to the world, Bethany Haines made it her life’s mission to get answers.
Brave Bethany, whose aid worker dad David was publicly murdered in 2013, dedicated her life to confronting the monsters who played a part in his torture, captivity and death.
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In an exclusive interview she reveals how she has travelled the world to confront ISIS’s most evil men and women.
Bethany tells how she had a two-and-a-half-hour showdown with one of her dad’s evil torturers, gave the middle finger to one of IS’s most dangerous men in Paris after he glared at her throughout a six-week trial and even travelled to Syria to meet IS brides who acted as recruiters for the terror group.
She became obsessed with getting answers about her dad’s final months and gained a unique insight into each evil members’ psyche.
Speaking to The Sun for our Meeting a Monster series, mum-of-one Bethany, 27, said: “I have met some of the most evil people imaginable. I’ve been to France, Syria and the US on numerous occasions to understand why they did what they did to my dad.
“Every meeting takes a piece of me away but I can’t stop trying to find out answers as to why they did that to my father.
“After every meeting I have had to rebuild, and it takes me months.
“But I know that if my dad was here he would be doing the same, going to every court case, taking up every opportunity to meet anyone connected to the murder and showing them but they’re not going to get away with that evil.”
Today Bethany recalls the chilling meetings with two of her father’s IS captors.
Bethany reveals how Brit terrorist Alexander Kotey tried to goad her as she pressed him for answers in a terrifying one-on-one meeting while fellow IS member El Shafee Elsheikh snarled at her as she called out his abhorrent treatment of her father.
But she says one terror attack mastermind “was the worst kind of monster that you can imagine hiding under your bed,” and left her haunted by “the deadest eyes I’ve ever seen”.
David, 44, from Perth, was abducted while working at a refugee camp in Syria in 2013.
He was held hostage by West London-raised quartet Elsheikh, Kotey, Mohammed Emwazi and Aine Davis – nicknamed The Beatles.
In 2014, a video of gaunt and pale David, wearing an orange jumpsuit and kneeling next to knife-wielding British-born Emwazi – dubbed Jihadi John – horrified the world.
It ended with his beheading – one of 27 the group are believed to have carried out.
I was very nervous. I was about to sit opposite and look into the eyes of the man who had done so much harm to my dad
Bethany Haines
Emwazi died in a drone strike in Syria in 2015 while Davis, 38, was captured in Turkey in 2017 and sentenced to seven and a half years for being a member of a terrorist organisation.
In 2022, Elsheikh was found guilty of hostage taking and conspiring to murder after a two-week trial in the US, while Kotey pleaded guilty to terror charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
One of the conditions of Kotey’s sentence was that he had to meet the loved ones of those he tormented.
‘You can’t inherit an apology’
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Bethany, who is from Perthshire, flew back to the US for the showdown with Kotey, who was being held at a super-max jail and was transported to a high-security Virginia justice building for the meeting.
Bethany said: “I was very nervous. I was about to sit opposite and look into the eyes of the man who had done so much harm to my dad. I needed answers. I needed an apology but what I got was a game from Kotey.
“When I got in the room, he was so relaxed, like nothing had happened. It was like chatting with someone in a café not someone who had tormented your dad. He doodled and drew spirals with a pen as I talked to him.
“He acted like it was a game. He told me things I didn’t know. He said my dad was abducted after he spotted him outside a kebab house.
“He said they took dad to hospital dressed as an IS fighter as he had become very ill and he blamed the other terrorists for driving the violence and torture. I took it all with a pinch of salt.
“He told me that before his beheading my dad accepted his fate and smiled. He wanted a reaction from me. He said my dad said to Mohammed Emwazi, the terrorist who beheaded him, ‘make it quick’.
“I could see that he was trying to make me uncomfortable and get a rise out of me. I asked him if he felt any remorse. He just came back and said, ‘you can’t inherit an apology’.
“I asked Kotey four times if he was sorry for abducting and torturing my dad and he just skirted around the answer. It was like getting blood out of a stone. He eventually said, ‘ok, I’m sorry for kidnapping and hurting your dad’.
“That was all I needed. I told him to ‘rot in hell’, slammed my notes and folders down in front of him and walked out the room. I didn’t want to give him another second. I wanted those words to be the last he heard from me.”
‘Look of a little boy’
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That same year, she flew over to the US to see fellow ‘Beatle’ – El Shafee Elsheikh – jailed for torturing and holding hostages, including her father, captive. She sat through every day of his trial.
She said: “I made a point of looking at him when speaking to him across the courtroom in my victim impact statement. He had the look of a little boy – someone who had done something naughty rather than being involved in the most evil of beheadings.
“When I read my statement, he looked broken to start with, but I told him that there is nothing in the Quran that justifies the violence meted out to my father. I even quoted a passage back to him. I vividly remember that he just looked at me and snarled.”
But in February this year, she met the most evil of her father’s foes.
‘Dark, dead eyes’
Bethany had been tormented by the knowledge that other unknown men who had horrifically tortured and enslaved her dad had never been brought to justice.
One of them was Mehdi Nemmouche, who had already been convicted of the Brussels Jewish Museum terror attack which killed four in 2014.
For six weeks, she sat through every day of his Paris trial in which he was eventually found guilty of kidnapping, acts of torture, and barbarism of seven hostages – including her father – in Syria.
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She said: “He was by far the most evil man I’ve ever met. His dark, dead eyes glared at me across the courtroom. He wanted to intimidate me.
“It was the first time I felt fear. He used the courtroom as a stage. You could tell that if he had a chance he would kill everyone in that courtroom.
“He gave off an awful vibe, let any remorse, and smirked and rolled his eyes after every comment that I made to him.
“I sat through every second of his six-week trial. I read a statement to him and was very forceful. He looked into my eyes with his dark pools of deadness and kept smirking. He kept rolling his eyes and glaring over me.
He was by far the most evil man I’ve ever met. His dark, dead eyes glared at me across the courtroom. He wanted to intimidate me
Bethany Haines
“It was so intense that I constantly wanted to leave the room but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. When he was sentenced to life, I hugged the person next to me, looked him in the eye and laughed. As he was taken down, I gave him the middle finger.
“I’d met lots of evil people that did terrible things to my dad but he haunted my dreams for months after seeing him. I would dream about being at Disneyland with my son and he would just be there.
“I would wake up in cold sweats. Being in his presence, took months to get over. I hated him.”
Nemmouche has since appealed his conviction – a decision Bethany says is “insulting”.
Terror group’s brides
And it wasn’t just the men of ISIS that Bethany has met – she also travelled to Syria in the wake of the fall of IS in 2019.
She went to a camp where she met some of the terror group’s brides – some of whom had come from the UK.
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She said: “It was a real eye-opener. I met a number of IS brides. One was from Tunisia, one was from Belgium and the other British. One felt like she’d been groomed but I later found out that she’d also been a recruiter to try to get other women over there.
“She seemed completely indoctrinated, dead behind the eyes. IS had fallen but she was still defending them. It got me so angry. In some ways I felt a tiny bit of sympathy for some but others I really didn’t.
I’d met lots of evil people that did terrible things to my dad but he haunted my dreams for months after seeing him
Bethany Haines
“Some stood by IS despite them being eradicated in that area at the time and they couldn’t really understand the pain and evil they were bringing to the world.”
Bethany added: “I have really seen close up every facet of the evil that IS has within its groups. It has been truly harrowing.”
