'My hero... what I want most is to have my dad home for good' - PHOTO+VIDEO

As desperate efforts to save the aid worker continued, a family member told of the awful toll his 18-month incarceration by Islamic State fanatics – and their threat to behead him – had taken on Bethany, 17.‘It’s knocked her off everything – school, everything,’ he said. ‘It’s destroyed her. She and her mother could not  tell anyone.’Bethany and her mother Louise are said to have been gagged by the Foreign Office from speaking to anyone of Mr Haines’s abduction. Those they did tell, including Bethany’s grandmother, had to sign a guarantee they would keep it secret as officials worked behind the scenes to try to negotiate his release.The teenager first became alarmed when she and her mother could not reach Mr Haines over the internet, it is understood. A short time later, they were told he had been kidnapped.Prime Minister David Cameron is to personally brief a member of the Haines family on the latest developments in a case, which has caused outrage around the world.On Tuesday, the 44-year-old Briton was shown kneeling in the sand wearing an orange jumpsuit on a video of the beheading of a US hostage – with the chilling warning that he would be next.Military commanders have been asked to draw up plans for a Special Forces rescue. But intelligence is said to indicate that some of the 20 international hostages have been ‘broken up’ and are being held separately to make any operation more complicated and hazardous.‘It’s in the balance what happens to him now,’ the family member said.‘Louise and Bethany are just waiting for a phone call from the Foreign Office. His daughter hasn’t seen the video or the picture of her dad.’ The anguish of the family in Scotland was mirrored in the Croatian town of Sisak where Mr Haines’s second wife Dragana Prodanovic and their four year-old daughter Athea are waiting for news.Plain-clothed police officers guarded the family’s detached home overlooking a river yesterday while Athea played on her bicycle on a terrace.Mrs Haines remained out of sight.  The family said they were terrified of saying or doing the wrong thing. ‘We do not want to say anything in case it harms David,’ said Mrs Haines’s  mother Dragica. Mrs Haines, who is now a successful businesswoman, met her husband while working as a translator. At the time, he was helping refugees return to their homes after the Balkans war.Friends said their relationship was ‘a true love story’ and they were ecstatic when she became pregnant with their daughter at the age of 41.‘They are so in love, it is such a shock’, one of her closest friends said yesterday.‘You would see them walking together close to their home holding each other’s hands. It is something you never usually see – a couple in their forties holding hands like young teenagers in love.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az