The Hindu : Front Page : Foreign doctors behind U.K. plot?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 04, 2007
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Foreign doctors behind U.K. plot?

Hasan Suroor

House searches, controlled explosions

LONDON: Foreign doctors, working or training in Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), are suspected to have been at the heart of the London-Glasgow terror plot, prompting calls for tougher vetting procedures for overseas medical personnel at a time when they are already struggling to find jobs here.

Seven of the eight persons, arrested in connection with last week’s failed bombings in London and the botched suicide attack at the Glasgow airport, are either doctors or medical students with links to NHS hospitals.

Mohammed Haneef, an Indian doctor arrested in Australia, also worked in a British hospital. The Holton Hospital in Cheshire, northwest England, confirmed that he had worked there as a temporary doctor on and off. The last stint was in 2005.

Another 26-year-old doctor from the same hospital was arrested in Liverpool on Saturday. Quoting his neighbours, The Independent newspaper said the doctor, who has not been officially identified, was “from India.”

A colleague told another newspaper that he might have been arrested because he was using the mobile phone and Internet account of another man who had left Britain. That man is thought to be Dr. Haneef. There was, however, no official confirmation.

Besides Dr. Haneef, the names of only three doctors have been officially disclosed: Mohammed Asha (26), a Jordanian, who worked in two British hospitals; his wife Marwah Dana Asha (27), a lab technician; and Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi national, who was one of the two occupants of the flaming jeep which rammed into the Glasgow airport terminal.

Dr. Abdullah worked in Scotland’s Royal Alexandria Hospital. His co-passenger, also a doctor, is being treated for burns and is in a “critical” condition. Meanwhile, even as Britain remained on the highest security alert, the police continued house searches and carried out controlled explosions, involving a suspicious car near a Glasgow mosque and three fire extinguishers at a west London tube station.

The Muslim Council of Britain said those who tried to kill or maim innocent people were “enemies of all Muslims and non-Muslims.”

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