Pictured with volunteers about to take aid to a refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border, this is the British father of two whom Islamic State extremists claim will be their next victim.
Taxi driver Alan Henning, 47, travelled to war-torn Syria last Christmas in a convoy of old ambulances in an attempt to take much-needed medical supplies to hospitals.
But the charity volunteer was kidnapped by Islamic State extremists shortly after making the 4,000-mile journey to the town of Al-Dana.
Footage emerged on Saturday night of him looking ill and exhausted as he knelt before the knife-wielding militant nicknamed Jihadi John in the desert.
He wore an orange jumpsuit, his arms tied behind his back, Jihadi John said Mr Henning would become the second British hostage to be killed if David Cameron persisted ‘in fighting the Islamic State’.
The Salford-born driver had volunteered with a Muslim charity to drive a convoy of 20 vehicles, including old NHS ambulances, to war-torn Syria last December.
They were transporting life-saving medical equipment such as defibrillators and stethoscopes to a hospital in Idlib province in the north-west of the country.
Mr Henning said goodbye to his wife of 23 years Barbara Henning, 45, and children Lucy, 17, and Adam, 15, just days before Christmas.
He left the family’s red-brick terrace house in Eccles, Greater Manchester, where he had lived for a decade, and met eight other volunteers from Salford.
They joined a larger team before Mr Henning embarked on the risky humanitarian mission. Friends said it was his third charity trip to Syria and he was ‘an ordinary guy just trying to help women and kids’.
Martin Shedwick, 50, whose company Sprint Motors helped to service some of the old ambulances before they went to Syria, said the self-employed taxi driver would lose two weeks’ pay each time he went but was determined to help the refugees.
‘He saw the suffering of all the women and children and he just wanted to do his humanitarian bit,’ he said. ‘They’d fill up the vehicles with aid stuff and things like toffees for the kids.
‘Hearing that he’s in danger of being beheaded, I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing political going on in his head. There’s no agenda.’
Mr Shedwick said Mr Henning even once took a fire engine to Syria. ‘We serviced it and I remember thinking “I wouldn’t fancy driving that all the way to the Turkish border”.
‘But he loved it. He was that sort of guy. He’s just a great guy with a good heart. He was the nicest guy you could ever meet, the sort who’d do anything for you.
‘I hope to God they’ll let him go. All he’s ever done in Syria is good.’
Sources said the trip was organised by Worcester-based Muslim aid charity Al Fatiha Global.
A friend who accompanied him to Syria last year – but said he could not talk about the kidnapping – said Mr Henning was not Muslim but had ‘wanted to do his bit’.
‘He’s done more than anyone could possibly imagine for the children of Syria – it would take me a week to tell you about it if I was allowed to,’ he said. ‘The best of the best – that’s the only way I can describe him. This is the heartbreaking thing, the amount this guy has done. Half the people of Syria are grateful to him.’
Asked why he was targeted by kidnappers, the friend said: ‘That’s what terrorists do, they target people. It wasn’t because he’s white, it’s because he’s a non-Muslim. They’ve got their own perverted view of Islam.’
Asked if others in the convoy were also kidnapped, he said he could not ‘go into it’, but that ‘everyone else got back eventually’.
‘We know from other released hostages that ISIS (Islamic State) know he’s a humanitarian,’ he added.
Yesterday morning Mr Henning’s wife and children returned to their home in Eccles in a taxi after apparently being updated on the situation by officials. They were escorted into the house by a friend.
Tam Hussein, a journalist who has reported on conflicts in the Middle East, suggested yesterday that Mr Henning had been warned not to travel to Syria.
He wrote on Twitter: ‘Despite the advise [sic] given – Henning wanted to make sure aid reached the intended, this as far as I understand was his motives for going in.’ He added: ‘Henning was genuinely trying to help the Syrian refugee crisis – nothing more. People spoke very highly of him.’
Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos said he was told by a Syrian activist who had been in jail in Al-Dana that a man called Alan Henning was placed in the same cell.
The activist apparently said he and Mr Henning had spent a day and a night together. During this time, the Briton was said to have been in good spirits and believed he would be freed soon as he was carrying out aid work.
But rather than releasing Mr Henning, IS reportedly took him to the rebel-held city of Raqqa instead.
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