Charity failed UK volunteer killed by Daesh

A charity that led convoys of aid into war-torn Syria failed to protect its volunteers, including Alan Henning, a Briton who was beheaded by Daesh after being held by the terror group for nine months in 2014, a new report has found.

Henning, 47, was a taxi driver from Greater Manchester who joined a group of volunteers to purchase and deliver vital medical equipment to a hospital in Idlib province in northwest Syria.

He and his fellow volunteers were working for British charity Al-Fatiha Global when he was kidnapped after crossing Syria’s border with Turkey in December 2013.

The report, published by the Charity Commission after a seven-year

The inquiry found that the charity’s trustees tried to claim that Henning was not volunteering for them, but for another organization called Aid4Syria.

inquiry, said it found no evidence to show that Al-Fatiha Global contacted the British police or counterterror authorities after Henning’s abduction. The inquiry also found that the charity’s trustees tried to claim that Henning was not volunteering for them, but for another organization called Aid4Syria. The commission found that Henning was working for Al-Fatiha Global.

The report said: “The fact that they did not know or regard him as a volunteer of the charity when he was, and his safety was in their custody whilst on the convoy was further evidence of lack of adequate oversight and management of the charity’s activities and risks arising from them.” The report found that Al-Fatiha Global convoys regularly carried up to £3,000 ($3,740) of unattributed cash, despite the risk this posed to volunteers.