The wife of a British aid worker held hostage by the Islamic State appealed for his release on Saturday, a week after the militants threatened to kill him.
Alan Henning, 47, was driving an ambulance part of an aid convoy carrying aid to a hospital in northwest Syria when they were stopped by gunmen and he was abducted, Reuters reported.
He appeared at the end of the execution video of another British aid worker David Haines released last week. The masked, British-speaking executioner warned that Henning will be executed if the United Kingdom continues its alliance with the U.S. and the fight against the ISIS.
Henning’s wife, Barbara, described him as “a peaceful, selfless man.”
“When he was taken he was driving an ambulance full of food and water to be handed out to anyone in need. His purpose for being there was no more and no less,” Barbara said in a statement released by the U.K.’s Foreign Office on Saturday.
She said she had tried contacting the militants but got no response, says USA Today.
“I pray that the people holding Alan respond to my messages and contact me before it is too late. When they hear this message I implore the people of the Islamic State to see it in their hearts to release my husband.”
On Saturday, three high-profile Muslim scholars called on the Islamic State to spare Henning–who was working for a Muslim aid organization at the time of his kidnapping–and said killing him would go against the Islamic law.
In a report by The Telegraph, three British Muslims belonging to the highly conservative spectrum of Islam pleaded to the militants said such acts are impermissible to the Shariah law. They are: Shaykh Haitham Al Haddad, a judge on London’s Sharia Council; Ustadh Abu Eesa, a Manchester-based cleric; and Imam Shakeel Begg of the Lewisham Islamic Centre.
“There is no justification in our religion that allows you to continue to hold him let alone harm him,” Begg said.
