Al-Qaeda tried to free Islamic State hostage – report

Al-Qaeda attempted to free hostage Alan Henning — the latest Western civilian to be threatened with beheading by the Islamic State — upon his capture in Syria last December, the Independent reported Tuesday.

According to the report, a local commander of the al-Qaeda-affiliated rebel group al-Nusra Front met with Henning’s captors several days after his arrest and urged them to free the aid worker, who he believed was only trying to help Syrian civilians suffering from the civil war.

Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist who spoke to the commander, told the newspaper that the latter told IS their actions were “wrong under Islamic law” and “counterproductive.” He returned from the meeting confident that Henning would be released shortly. However, Henning has remained in custody and may now face execution.

Kareem said that IS fighters had arrested Henning mere hours after he entered Syria in an aid convoy from Turkey, claiming that he was a Western spy. When Henning’s Muslim friends in the convoy demanded proof, IS militants explained “that they couldn’t believe that a white Christian would want to come to Syria at this time unless he was a spy.”

When Henning’s companions warned the group’s fighters that capturing innocent aid workers would cause serious damage to humanitarian efforts in Syria, an IS commander told them: “We don’t need convoys, we have Allah.”

The Islamic State, once an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Syria, was disavowed by its parent terror group in February of this year due to its increased radicalization, which had reportedly become too extreme even for that organization.

“Al-Qaeda has been critical of [Islamic State] in recent months,” Prof. Peter Neumann, director of King’s College London’s International Center for the Study of Radicalization told the Independent. “It understands how its behavior will be perceived by the Western public.”

“Although the two groups’ underlying ideology is still very similar, al-Qaeda is much more strategic,” he added. “For example, it is not opposed to beheadings but realizes it makes no sense to carry them out in the way that [Islamic State] does because this tactic will lose them a lot of friends.”

In June, IS swept through Iraq, taking over large parts of the country and declaring a Muslim caliphate in those territories as well as the lands it controls in Syria.

The US began conducting limited airstrikes against IS fighters when they tried to push toward the northern Kurdish city of Irbil in August, in order to protect its troops there, and has ramped up its attacks since then.

Two American journalists and a British aid worker have been beheaded by the Islamic State in recent weeks, all three killed in gruesome videos issued to the media by a masked executioner sporting a British accent, who has been dubbed “Jihadi John.” The terror group has demanded that the US and UK not intervene in the region and stop attacks on its forces, threatening further executions.

The most recent victim was David Haines, a British aid worker held hostage by the group since March 2013. The video depicting his killing was released late Saturday. It concludes with a death threat against Henning, shown in the same kind of orange jumpsuit the other three were wearing when they were killed.

US President Barack Obama last week authorized strikes against the group in Syria, and his administration is currently trying to cobble together an international coalition to go after the group. US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that nearly 40 countries have agreed to contribute to a worldwide fight to defeat the militants before they gain more territory in Iraq and Syria.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said his country would continue offering logistical help to US forces and that counter-terrorism efforts will increase, describing the Islamic State group as a “massive” security threat that cannot be ignored.

“They are not Muslims, they are monsters,” Cameron said.

The CIA estimates the Sunni militant group has access to between 20,000 and 31,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria. A senior Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press that more than 27,600 Islamic State fighters are believed to be operating in Iraq alone, including about 2,600 foreigners.