Father asks ISIS to treat captured son as guest

Amman - The father of a Jordanian pilot captured by Islamic State
fighters after his plane crashed in Syria said he did not consider his
son a hostage and called on his captors to treat him as a "guest".

Jordan is one of several Arab countries participating in the US-led
military mission to bomb fighters from the Islamist group, which
holds territory in both Syria and Iraq.

First Lieutenant Muath al-Kasaesbeh, 27, was captured after his jet
crashed in northeast Syria on Wednesday during a bombing mission
against the militants. The US military, which commands the operation,
said enemy fire was not the cause of the crash.

Kasaesbeh, who comes from a prominent Jordanian Sunni Muslim
family, is the first pilot from the international coalition known to
have been captured by Islamic State.

The Sunni Muslim jihadist group has a history of killing enemy soldiers
that it captures on the battlefield and beheading Western civilians
that it takes hostage. Many of the captives it has killed are Shi'ites
or non-Muslims, but the group has also executed Sunnis for fighting
alongside its enemies.

His family has pleaded for mercy.
"I do not want to describe him as a hostage. I call him a guest," his
father, Saif al-Kasaesbeh, told Reuters Television.

"He is a guest among brothers of ours in Syria Islamic State. I ask
them - by the name of God and with the dignity of the prophet
Mohammed, peace be upon him - to receive him as a guest of his hosts
and treat him well," he said.

- Reuters