ISIS has threatened to execute former U.S. soldier Peter Kassig next in the gruesome video showing the beheading of British citizen Alan Henning.
A former U.S. Army Ranger from Indianapolis who was deployed to Iraq in 2007, Kassig went to help Syrian refugees in a Lebanese hospital and, in the spirit of humanitarianism shared by his fellow Islamic State captives, started his own aid group.
The group, called Special Emergency Response and Assistance, supplied Syrian refugees with blankets, cooking stoves, propane fuel tanks and other necessities, according to a 2013 Time article about the Indiana native.
The 26-year-old said he was inspired and touched by the warm reaction of Syrian locals who received the assistance.
'I did not meet a single man woman or child who could not muster a smile and a message of strength and hope that was nothing short of earth-shatteringly humbling,' he said then.
Kassig was passionate about learning more about the Middle East after his tour of duty in Iraq, and told Time he wanted to gain a better understanding of his 'role in the conflict in Iraq and its impact on the Middle East in general from a personal perspective and from the perspective of the Arab world.'
Kassig also volunteered in a Palestinian refugee camp in South Beirut and a hospital in Lebanon.
In February 2013, Kassig told Syria Deeply that his aid SERA group needed more funds to keep their relief efforts going.
And he spoke of why he gave aid instead of continuing to pick up a gun.
'Sometimes rebels want to know if I will help train people or if I will join the fight. I always tell them no,' he said. 'It is of course not that I do not feel terrible for the civilians that are suffering in Syria, but ... for an American young man in my position that would be foolish, and regarded as such by pretty much everyone, including the opposition.
'I can either be in a position to deliver tens of thousands of dollars of antibiotics for women and children, or I can be another young man with a gun.'
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