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  The Physicians Plot: British Police Hunt the Terror Doctors

The Physicians Plot British Police Hunt the Terror Doctors

By Matthias Gebauer in Glasgow

Part 2: Was the Plan Hatched in the Hospital?

As the arrests continue, the investigators are solving the puzzle piece by piece. And they are coming up with a picture of a whole network of medics connected to the attacks. They arrested a 27-year-old doctor in Liverpool, and on Monday two other men were arrested at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, just a few kilometers from Glasgow Airport. The two are also doctors who worked at the clinic. Shortly afterwards the Australian authorities said that they had arrested another man in connection with the British investigation. The 27-year-old Indian man, Mohammed Haneef, is a doctor who apparently wanted to board a one-way flight from Brisbane Airport to Pakistan.

In the meantime the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a giant concrete block in the Glasgow's Paisley district, has become the central focus of the investigations. The driver of the jeep in the Glasgow attacks, ironically, is now being treated here in the very same hospital for his severe burns.

He's the only patient left -- the hospital has been sealed off since Saturday and patients have been sent elsewhere, while the members of staff are all being questioned. It was here, just a few kilometers from the airport, that Dr. Bilal Abdulla worked. And it seems increasingly likely that those involved in the plot met at the hospital. One investigator said that it was possible the attacks were even planned here.

The news of the medically trained terrorists has caused consternation in Britain. The Financial Times has written of a "network of foreign doctors," while the mass-circulation Daily Mail claims that security officials have revealed that there are at least 12 doctors in Great Britain who are suspected of terrorism.

For the public, though, the shock lies elsewhere: in the idea that doctors, who a patient trusts with his or her life, could be indiscriminate mass murderers. If you can't trust a doctor, people are asking, who can you still trust?

And then there are other questions: Were there sufficient checks on the doctors from the Middle East who found work easily in Britain? Have terrorist groups found a hole in the security controls that were introduced after the 2005 attacks? But the media and others are also asking if the cell is the only one of its kind or if there are other "Doctors of Death" waiting for their assignments.

This much is certain: doctors from the Middle East can now expect to be closely observed, just as two years ago the focus was on "home grown terrorists," who had been radicalized in Britain itself.

The British National Health Service (NHS) has always had to check on foreign doctors' professional qualifications and whether they had a criminal record. But checking for possible contacts to terrorist groups had not been deemed necessary. It is still not clear if checks on doctors when issuing visas are as strict as those for others such as students. There are no clear figures available. It is estimated that around 6,000 doctors from the Middle East are currently working in Great Britain.

Militant Doctors not that Unusual

However, the connection between doctors or academics and terror organizations is nothing new. The assumption that it is above all the poor and uneducated that become terrorists is simply false. There have often been doctors in the service of jihad:

• Osama Bin Ladens' deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is a paediatrician. He was originally in the Egyptian terrorist group Gamaa Islamiyya, which has a number of doctors in its ranks.

• Mahmud Sahar, a thyroid specialist, served as Hamas foreign minister.

• In a collection of obituaries for jihadists who have died in Iraq there is the story of a Saudi medical student, who broke off his studies to become a suicide bomber.

• An Egyptian doctor was viewed as an important pillar of the local Islamist scene in southern Germany before he went back to his native country in 2006. He is thought to have connections with Gamaa Islamiyya.

• In the US a doctor was convicted in May for agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters.

But doctors tend not to venture out onto the battlefield. Up until now it was generally the rule that they occupied the leadership positions in the militant Islamist organizations and gave the attackers their instructions -- rather than being the attackers themselves.

But the recent events in Britain show how things have now changed.