STARING into the eyes of one of the terrorists who captured her father, brave Bethany Haines asked for the fourth time if he would apologise for the crimes he committed. Alexanda Kotey fidgeted, looked down and eventually muttered: “I’m sorry for abducting and hurting your dad.” The killer was one of four British-born IS terrorists, […]
STARING into the eyes of one of the terrorists who captured her father, brave Bethany Haines asked for the fourth time if he would apologise for the crimes he committed.
Alexanda Kotey fidgeted, looked down and eventually muttered: “I’m sorry for abducting and hurting your dad.”
The killer was one of four British-born IS terrorists, nicknamed The Beatles, who kidnapped and publicly beheaded aid worker David in 2014. His body has never been found. His daughter did not believe a word of the apology.
Bethany, 24, who lives in Perthshire with her young son, has just returned home from the extraordinary two-and-a-half-hour showdown with Kotey in a high-security US court facility 3,500 miles away.
She was granted the meeting after Kotey was jailed for life for his part in the abduction, torture and beheading of IS hostages in Syria.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Bethany said: “Not every victim gets a chance to sit a metre or so away from their loved one’s tormentor but I was offered the chance.
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“I needed answers, pieces to the puzzle filled in. I also wanted an apology, but it was all for show. Kotey was so casual. It was like chatting with someone in a cafe, not someone who had done horrific things to your dad.
“He doodled and drew spirals with a pen throughout our chat. It was bizarre.
“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 abducting and hurting your dad’. It was like my toddler apologising so he could get a conversation over with so they could get on with playing. I didn’t believe it for a second.
“In my mind, he hasn’t changed one bit.”
Today, in her first newspaper interview since the meeting, Bethany reveals the new information that Londoner Kotey — known as Jihadi George — gave about the killing of her dad.
The IS terrorist told her how her father was abducted after he was spotted outside a kebab shop in Syria, was later rushed to hospital dressed as an IS fighter by his kidnappers after he became gravely ill, and was beheaded on a different day than Bethany originally thought.
The terrorist, who admitted acting “sadistically”, blamed the other terrorists for driving the barbarism, claiming: “I didn’t agree with it.” David, 44, from Perth, was abducted while working at a refugee camp in Syria in 2013 and held hostage by West London-raised quartet El Shafee Elsheikh, Mohammed Emwazi, Aine Davis and Kotey.
In 2014, a video of gaunt and pale David kneeling next to knife-wielding Emwazi — dubbed Jihadi John — horrified the world. It ended with his beheading, one of 27 the group are believed to have carried out.
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 terror group.
Elsheikh and Kotey were both captured in January 2018 in Syria.
In April this year, Elsheikh was found guilty of hostage-taking and conspiring to murder after a two-week trial, while Kotey pleaded guilty to terror charges and was sentenced to life in prison.
When he saw me, he smiled. I instantly felt contempt. I just glared at him. I sat down and knew I had to get the first words in.
Bethany Haines
One of the conditions of Kotey’s sentence was that he had to meet loved ones of those he tormented, if they agreed. On June 28, Bethany flew over for the showdown. Kotey, being held at a super-max US jail, was transported to a Virginia justice building for the meeting.
Bethany said: “I was expecting him to stonewall everything I said. The police and prosecutors had told us to prepare for him to say nothing.
“I had 30 to 35 questions for him, I thought I’d have to interrogate him. But that isn’t what I needed at all.
“The night before I barely slept and woke up at 5.45am. I walked from the hotel across to the department of justice room around midday. The last time I had seen Kotey I had told him to rot in hell in court. Because of that I think prosecutors were worried I might lose my cool with him but I was calm.
“The main thing I worried about was having to shake his hand and that awkward opening of the meeting. I walked into this plain room and there he was. ‘This was it’, I thought. He had lawyers and members of the FBI in there. Opposite him, on the other side of the table, was a chair, which was mine.
“He looked better than the last time I’d seen him. He’d put on weight, trimmed his beard. When he saw me, he smiled. I instantly felt contempt. I just glared at him. I sat down and knew I had to get the first words in.
“I ended up saying,: ‘I would say it’s nice to meet you but it’s really not’. He kind of smirked and nodded as if to acknowledge it. Throughout the meeting I could tell he was not nervous.”
He said, ‘We set a tail on them for two days. We waited until it was dark, boxed them in and took them hostage’.
Bethany Haines
But when Bethany — who has compiled a 250-page dossier on her dad’s final days — began her questioning, Kotey began to give her vital clues no one has revealed before.
She said: “Kotey told me about how it had been his idea to kidnap my dad after he and others were spotted outside a kebab house.
“He said, ‘We set a tail on them for two days. We waited until it was dark, boxed them in and took them hostage’.
“I told him I had found out that the captors made my dad and others have ‘royal rumble’ wrestling matches, after which the loser would be tortured.
“Kotey said he knew about it but claimed he was not there. That is not what I had heard. I’m sure he was lying.
“He also told where my dad had been held. People had just told me that they were held in somewhere known as ‘the box’. Kotey confirmed this was an old farmhouse and confirmed where in Syria it was.”
Bethany discovered in court that her dad, who was held captive for 18 months, suffered severe organ failure due to poor care.
But Kotey told her they even rushed him to hospital to take care of their prized hostage.
She added: “I asked Kotey who was in the worst condition and he said, ‘Your dad was pretty bad’. At that point I held out two pictures, one of my dad looking healthy and one in the photo taken before he died. I said, ‘How do you let someone get like this?’
“He said that my dad had multiple organ failure and that leader Emwazi dressed him as an IS fighter and took him to hospital to make sure his valuable hostage didn’t die. He said it so coldly, as if I’d say, ‘Ah, fair enough’.”
“He spent much of the time blaming Emwazi, saying he was the ringleader and painting himself as the lowest person on the totem pole. It was rubbish. I insisted he’d had to torture dad because of the hostage negotiations.
“He did not agree they had to do it. He kept saying, ‘I didn’t agree with it. It wasn’t about your dad — it was about what they represented’.”
“He also said, ‘What you have to understand is that your dad meant nothing to Emwazi’.” Bethany had pinpointed the final resting place of her dad’s remains to a 1km area in the Syrian hills near Raqqa.
He said they filmed the video in a number of shots and said dad actually died the day before I originally thought he’d died, which was September 12.
Bethany Haines
Kotey confirmed the area and shed new light on her dad’s final moments. She said: “I didn’t really want to know lots about how he died but Kotey seemed to take great enjoyment telling me about the detail.
He said they filmed the video in a number of shots and said dad actually died the day before I originally thought he’d died, which was September 12.
“Kotey claimed he wasn’t there for the death and only found out when Emwazi came to see him.
“Apparently Emwazi just said to him very calmly on day, ‘I just killed David Haines’. Kotey told me that my dad’s last words had been, ‘Please just make it quick’.
“Kotey seemed quite animated when he told me this, which I didn’t like. Kotey even said, ‘Your dad seemed like a strong and silent man’. For a while I started thinking maybe he’s changed. Then I think he started to show his real colours.
“I asked him, ‘Were you sadistic?’ He said, ‘No’. I asked him, ‘What would you call yourself then? Evil? Wrong?’
“He just said, ‘Yes, wrong, but I suppose you could call it sadistic if you wanted to’. That got my back up. And then it was made worse by the laboured apology. At one point he said to me, ‘You can’t inherit an apology. All the people I want to apologise to are dead’.
“At the end of the interview he was asked if there was anything he wanted to say. He sat there for what seemed like a minute, in silence.
Kotey told me that my dad’s last words had been, ‘Please just make it quick’.
Bethany Haines
“He just said to me, ‘If it was just you and me I would, but with others here I don’t feel comfortable’.
“It was such a weird answer. It was at that point, I just went, ‘I’m done’. I didn’t look up. I just walked out.
“Looking back at it now, I think it is all just part of his plan to one day get sent back to prison in the UK.
“But I fully believe this guy isn’t sorry one bit. I looked into his eyes.”
Shortly after the meeting Bethany saw the van carrying Kotey back to his ultra high-security prison.
She said: “It was quite pleasing to know that he was going back to spend the rest of his life in hell on earth and that I was the last person he saw.
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“I might have got some important answers about my dad but I didn’t believe the apology for a second.
“I don’t believe Kotey will every change.”
