The brutal truth? Britain lacks the reach to bring any ISIS killer to justice

The words are strong, the sentiment behind them no doubt heartfelt. ‘We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes,’ said David Cameron, speaking as Britain recoiled in horror at yet another jihadist beheading video, this time of a British man, David Haines. Sadly, Cameron’s promises are empty. Ask a Whitehall official how many suspected murderers of British hostages have been brought to justice and there is a long silence. ‘Let me get back to you on that,’ said one this week. There is a depressing pattern. In 2004, Ken Bigley, from Liverpool, was beheaded in Iraq by the group led by a Jordanian militant called Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Tony Blair expressed his outrage and vowed to bring those responsible to justice. Two years later, we still hadn’t got him. Al-Zarqawi was then killed by a bomb dropped on his hideout — but by the US airforce after being tracked down to his lair, not by British detectives but by Jordanian intelligence agents. There were sound tactical reasons why no one could go and arrest Al-Zarqawi, but his death was closer to retribution than justice. In January 2009, a Briton, Edwin Dyer, was among several western tourists abducted near Timbuktu in Mali; they had come to watch the Tuareg Sahara festival. Whoever grabbed them at gunpoint, they ended up in the hands of al-Qa’eda’s local franchise, AQIM, short for al-Qa’eda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. AQIM were after money, guns and leverage to get their friends out of jail. So they issued their demands and the Swiss, the German and the Canadian hostages got released, reportedly for ransoms and prisoner swaps. But Britain has a long-established policy of ‘not making substantive concessions to kidnappers’, on the sensible grounds that this enriches the abductors and encourages them to take more hostages.