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| Pleas for British hostage - the papers | |
| (about 3 hours later) | |
| As voters go to the polls in the Scottish independence referendum, the event dominates front pages once again. | |
| However, in common with other broadcasters, the BBC is reporting only factual accounts of the election throughout polling day to avoid influencing the outcome. So, a focus on inside pages reveals concerns over the wellbeing of British hostage Alan Henning, who is being held by Islamic State militants in Syria. | |
| The Sun reports how Muslim friends of the 47-year-old taxi driver have made a video appeal, entitled Call of Mercy, calling for him to be spared. "Abu Abdulla from Al Fatiha Global, the charity behind the convoy, said Alan thought he was safe because he was delivering aid," the paper reports. | |
| The Guardian quotes from the video, which says of Mr Henning: "His only interest was helping to relieve the suffering of brothers and sisters in Syria. Please do not take his life to pay for the crimes that the international governments have committed." The message ends: "Please, please, please release Alan." | |
| A similar plea, albeit it stronger terms, from more than 100 Muslim leaders appears in the Independent. | |
| "The un-Islamic fanatics are not acting as Muslims, but, as the prime minister has said, they are acting as monsters," reads the letter from signatories including the Muslim Council of Britain's secretary general, along with imams from Derby, Manchester, London and Birmingham. | |
| "They are perpetrating the worst crimes against humanity. This is not jihad - it is a war against all humanity." | |
| Meanwhile Dr Huw Dylan, of King's College London, explains in the Daily Telegraph why it's so difficult for British agents to track down hostages and their captors. | |
| "The US withdrawal [since the Iraq War], and former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki's divisive politics, have undermined much of the impetus for local cooperation," he says, while relations with the Syrian government make the problem even more acute. | |
| "The technological capability of Western intelligence to capture terrorist communications and turn them into actionable intelligence for military or police forces is hampered by the lack of operational presence on the ground," he adds. |