THE daughter of a hostage murdered by Islamic State terrorists has given her support to military action in Iraq as the US said it believes it has identified the British extremist in the video showing her father being beheaded.
Bethany Haines, 17, said the murder of her father David Haines, who grew up in Perth, had torn her family apart, but had also made them stronger. She spoke out ahead of a Commons vote today in which MPs are expected to back a call for British warplanes to join international airstrikes on the terror group.
The teenager, who praised Mr Haines as "amazing, brilliant", said she supported the use of UK war-planes to target the militants, adding: "IS need to be eradicated. They can't be doing this to people and getting away with it no matter what nationality, if they're Western or not. Hundreds of Syrians have been killed by them and they need to be stopped."
In the US, FBI director James Comey said he believed the man known as "Jihadi John" had been identified. He speaks with a British accent and is seen holding a knife in the videos showing the killings of Mr Haines and American reporters James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Asked if he would prioritise capturing the jihadist, Mr Comey said: "We will do, and expend the effort that I think the American people would want us to and expect us to."
On the eve of today's vote, which could see the UK carry out airstrikes within days, the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, warned military involvement in Iraq could last for years. Mr Fallon said that UK Armed Forces would be in it for the long haul.
The motion before MPs will specifically prohibit action in nearby Syria, where IS also has strongholds.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article