Savers Of Lives Turn The Tables

Sydney Morning Herald

Wednesday July 4, 2007

James Button Herald Correspondent in London

THEY have sworn an oath to save lives but as many as six foreign doctors or medical students are alleged to be at the heart of a plan to bring mass murder to Britain.

The revelation of the plot allegedly hatched in Britain's hospitals raises alarming questions about the country's vulnerability to acts of terrorism committed by educated foreign workers.

Five of those arrested in Britain are understood to be from the Middle East and include a Jordanian neurosurgeon, an Iraqi doctor who trained in Baghdad, and a Lebanese man who is fighting for his life after setting himself alight in the attack on Glasgow's airport on Saturday.

Dr Mohammed Haneef, detained in Brisbane, is Indian, while police there have interviewed a second doctor trained in India, Mohamed Asif Ali.

British police are desperately trying to establish a common denominator among the suspects and how they knew each other, since none of them were previously known to MI5 and they have no records of criminal or terrorism-related activities.

In London, police were interrogating Mohammed Asha, a "brilliant" 26-year-old surgeon from Jordan, and Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi junior doctor who qualified in Baghdad in 2004 and began work in Britain last year before riding in the burning Jeep that rammed the main terminal at Glasgow airport.

Two of Dr Abdullah's colleagues at Glasgow's Royal Alexandra Hospital were also under arrest, The Daily Telegraph in London reported, as doctors at the same hospital tried to save the life of the suspect, who suffered burns to 90 per cent of his body.

The men, who may be medical students in their 20s, are said to come from Saudi Arabia.

Police say the number of doctors wanted for involvement in the alleged plot is set to rise.

Doctors across Britain voiced shock that their colleagues may have plotted terrorism. If it was true, it would mark a "betrayal not only of society but of their own profession", Edwin Borman, chairman of the international committee of the British Medical Association, told the BBC.

Doctors at the Glasgow hospital were said to be devastated by the news, with some breaking down in tears. A junior doctor was distressed that she had seen Dr Abdullah spending long periods on Arabic websites and had not reported it to her superiors.

Another junior doctor was also arrested in Liverpool but a colleague was adamant he had been mixed up with another doctor from Halton Hospital, near Liverpool, who went to Australia a year ago.

The colleague told Britain's Muslim News the suspect may have been detained because he had a mobile phone chip of the doctor who went to Australia. It is unclear whether the man in question is Dr Mohamed Haneef, now being questioned in Brisbane.

News of the alleged doctors' plot - which also includes a naturalised Briton, The Guardian reported - is bound to force a reassessment of Britain's procedures for importing medical staff to fill shortages in the National Health Service. More than a third of the 240,000 doctors registered with the NHS are foreign-born, although the proportion is declining as more locally trained doctors graduate.

An NHS spokeswoman, Sian Thomas, told the BBC extensive checks were carried out to eliminate "unsuitable people" among foreign doctors but acknowledged the checks were not designed to stop potential terrorists.

Of the 22,500 to have come in the past three years, 870 are from Iraq and 74 from Jordan.

Among them was Dr Asha, arrested on the M6 on Sunday with his wife, Marwah, 27, a medical laboratory technician, and their baby. Marwah Asha, who wears a veil, was not working in Britain.

Counter-terrorism officers told The Guardian that Dr Asha was the cell's ringleader but in Jordan his brother Ahmed, who is also a GP, insisted British police had made a mistake, saying "he was in love with the British people. He kept forever singing their praises. We laughingly asked him, 'Have you turned into a Briti?"'

After graduating at the top of his class in neurology at the University of Jordan in 2004, Dr Asha worked most recently at a North Staffordshire hospital, where colleagues said he gave no impression of being a fanatic.

An anaesthetist at the hospital told the Daily Mail: "If it turns out that he is the mastermind behind this bombing campaign, then he is also an extremely good actor who has pulled the wool over the eyes of dozens of colleagues."

The allegations against the doctors, however, fit a pattern of Islamist terrorists often being well-educated, especially in science and medicine. Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, from Egypt, is a medically trained doctor.

Several of the September 11, 2001 hijackers undertook university studies in technical fields, among other examples.

© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald

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