During a video recorded especially for the Suffolk Leadership Prayer Breakfast, the family of three men murdered on a beach in Libya last year expressed forgiveness and even thanks for the beheading of their loved ones by members of the ISIS terrorist group.

“They went to their rightful place in heaven,” Bashir Kamel said of his two brothers and another family member, who were among 21 Coptic Christians murdered by ISIS in a video that was used by the Islamic State for recruitment.

Forty-five days after his two brothers, Bishoy Estafanos Kamel, 25, and Samuel Estafanos Kamel, 23, were kidnapped in Libya by members of ISIS, they were lined up on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and systematically killed for refusing to convert to Islam.

In an interview filmed in Egypt on Tuesday to be shown exclusively to the several hundred people attending Suffolk’s annual prayer breakfast Thursday, Bashir Kamel said his family members’ very public deaths had come as a relief to the family, which had been fretting over what had happened to them since their disappearance.

“It was an honor that our brothers received,” Bashir Kamel said. “Christianity is based on martyrdom.”

“They kept their faith and did not waver,” said the mother of Bashir and two of his slain brothers.

Both of the surviving family members also expressed hope during the interview — hope that the men’s killers would repent of their sins and turn to Jesus Christ.

Indeed, hope was an overarching theme during Thursday’s event, which featured city, state and U.S. military officials reading scripture and leading prayers as part of the National Day of Prayer.

The morning’s keynote speaker was Elijah M. Brown, executive vice president of the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, an organization whose mission statement says it seeks to “create a world where religious freedom is recognized by nations across the globe as a fundamental human right.”

Following the video of the interview, Brown said, “The story rarely ends with the execution, with the shock, with the burned-down home. There’s hope in the brother and the mother.”

Just before he died, Brown explained, one of the martyred Christians gave his waiting killer his Bible. After the execution, the killer opened the bloodstained book and began reading from it, and he has since “become a disciple of Jesus.”

Christians are persecuted in 70 different nations around the world, he said, and 20 followers of Christ are killed for their faith each day.

Amid such statistics, “grace and hope remain a remarkable response,” Brown said.