Medics linked to UK bombs
Last updated: Friday, July 06, 2007 PrintBritain's medical profession voiced shock Tuesday over reports that most of the suspects in three failed car bombings are foreign-born doctors or trained staff in the state-run health system.
If it is proved that doctors are involved, 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 BBC radio.
The development also raised questions over the vetting procedures in the state-run National Health Service (NHS) for medics from abroad applying to work in Britain.
Failed attempt
The reports hit staff hard at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in
Paisley, near Glasgow. Newspapers said it was the workplace of Iraqi
junior doctor Bilal Abdulla, who was allegedly part of a failed attempt
Saturday to ram a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow airport's main terminal.
The Guardian newspaper said some of the hospital staff broke down in tears, while others reacted with stunned disbelief when they heard about his arrest.
His alleged accomplice meanwhile remains in the Paisley hospital in critical condition, with burns over most of his body.
A security source told AFP on Monday that all the people implicated in the plot so far entered Britain "perfectly legitimately, I think, to work inside the NHS."
A total of seven people had been arrested when he was interviewed.
Eight are now in custody.
All from Middle East
He added that he understood all the suspects in the case were from
Middle Eastern countries. Police would not confirm this nor his
understanding that they were all medical staff in the NHS.
The suspects reported to be in custody include a Jordanian surgeon named by officials in Amman as Mohammed Jamil Abdelkader Asha, and his wife. The Jordanian's offices in a British hospital were searched Monday.
The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that six NHS doctors were held over the failed attacks.
The broadsheet and other newspapers splashed news of the arrest of Abdulla and other doctors across their front pages on Tuesday along with photographs of Abdulla, a thick-set man wearing a white T-shirt being gripped by two police officers.
Shortly before the picture was taken, he and an accomplice allegedly rammed a Jeep Cherokee into the main door at Glasgow International Airport's main terminal building.
The vehicle burst into flames and set the building on fire. Police have linked the incident to a foiled double car bombing in London on Friday.
Violation of Hippocratic Oath
Both Borman and Prasad Rao, chairman of the British International
Doctors Association, pointed out that if they were involved in such
plots, doctors would consider it a violation of their Hippocratic Oath.
"The first rule of the Hippocratic Oath is just do no harm," Borman told BBC radio.
"And clearly the involvement of any medical profession in anything that goes beyond that would be a betrayal not only of society but of their own profession," he said.
Interviewed by The Guardian, Rao said: "We are a healing profession.
It shocked me to hear that a doctor could remotely be connected to the people who are trying to kill and maim people for no reason.
A doctor's duty, even if he finds an injured terrorist, is to give medical help. You never knowingly help or assistant an individual to kill and maim others," Rao was quoted as saying.
Many foreign doctors
Figures from the General Medical Council (GMC) showed that around
75,000 of the 240,000 doctors registered in Britain were trained
abroad, including 1,985 in Iraq and 184 in Jordan. India alone trained
27,558 doctors.
The statistics did not list the doctors' nationalities.
"We are cooperating with police inquiries where appropriate," a GMC spokeswoman told AFP.
But she declined to comment on whether the incidents would prompt a review at the GMC, which checks credentials from doctors applying to work in both the NHS and the private sector. (Sapa)
Read more:Israel: Impact of terrorism
Terror takes mental toll
July 2007
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