The brother of David Haines, the British aid worker killed by the Islamic State group after being held captive for 18 months, warned on Sunday, of the threat that radicalisation posed “to the wholesale safety of every person in the world.”

“Increasingly we are seeing more and more radicalization in every walk of life. It is not a race, religion or political issue, it is a human issue and it is in our everyday lives,” Mike Haines said.

David Haines is the third Westerner beheaded in recent weeks by the Islamic State group.

“The Muslim faith is not to blame for ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), nor is it the fault of people of Middle Eastern descent. The attraction of complete control and the use of terror as an implement of population control has a widespread appeal to many disenfranchised throughout society,” Mike Haines added.

British officials had said they were doing everything possible to protect Haines.

His brother said the family “received all the support and cooperation that could under the circumstances be given. We can only praise and give our thanks to the agencies who have helped us during our time of need.”

“My family and I agree with the government that we need those travelling to fight for ISIL and on their return to the UK face the consequences of their actions,” he added.

The 44-year-old Haines was kidnapped in Syria in March last year when he was working for the French aid group Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development, or ACTED, to help victims of the fighting there.

British media have reported that Haines, who is married to a Croatian woman, was educated in Perth in Scotland, and spent 11 years serving in the Royal Air Force (RAF) before becoming an international aid worker.

“He was someone who had a sense of fun, and he was someone who had a concern for other people, which is evidenced by the work that he was out doing,” Reverend Gordon Campbell, a friend of Haines’ told British broadcaster Sky News in Perth.

Haines had a teenage daughter in Scotland from a previous marriage and a four-year-old daughter in Croatia with his current wife, Dragana, who did not comment on Sunday morning on the news of the killing.

The European Commission held one minute’s silence on Monday (September 15) to pay tribute to murdered British aid worker David Haines after he was beheaded by Islamic State militants fighting in Iraq and Syria.

European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, Kristalina Georgieva said the humanitarian community had lost a “dedicated, wonderful, warm,” member and called the murder of the father of two “barbaric”.

“A barbaric act that only reminds us that there are huge risks for people who risk their lives to save the lives of others. Last year the humanitarian community witnessed on a daily basis killings, kidnappings, attacks on humanitarian convoys, 450 times, just in one year,” said Georgieva at the opening of a high-level meeting in Brussels on the EU’s response to the Ebola crisis.

Story compiled with information from The Associated Press and Reuters.