More details about the UK Physicians who Specialized in Death by "Syringe" Bombs

More on the Killer and Pysician Ring Leader for the Syringe Jihadi Bombers from

the UK Times Online

 

Dr. Bilal ABDULLA was born in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire  and spent his infant years in Britain while his Iraqi father, Talal, was training to be a doctor in the early 1980s.

The family moved back to Baghdad where they were part of the privileged Sunni Muslim elite under Saddam Hussein. His father worked as a Rheumatologist and one of his cousins became a professor of French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.

 

Abdulla was devoutly religious and, according to one family member, would not even permit his mother to take off her headscarf in front of him. His knowledge of the Koran was exemplary and he could recite long passages. But he appeared to be no violent extremist.

Entitled by birth to a British passport, he came to Cambridge in 2001 to improve his English and rented a flat in Chesterton Road, near where an uncle lived.

"He was polite and never mentioned politics to us. He liked to joke a lot," said the uncle, who does not wish to be named.

His nine-month spell in England coincided with the 9/11 Al-Qaeda attacks on America. He returned to Iraq to study at Baghdad University's medical school, and within 18 months Saddam Hussein was toppled and coalition forces took control.

Abdulla marked himself out as a fierce opponent of the occupation. His family's businesses and property in Anbar province had been destroyed during the invasion; and acquaintances say he became further incensed when his best friend was killed in fighting in Falluja in early 2004.

Abdulla's Baghdad tutor, Professor Ahmed Ali, claims he became difficult to control. "He didn't care about his studies. He only cared about the resistance . . . Many times in the class he interrupted to talk about the mujaheddin. I thought he was crazy."

Abdulla sailed through his medical exams. Ali says the university – which was under pressure from the Iraqi resistance – was forced to give him good marks because it was the "only way to get him out".

With this degree Abdulla returned to Cambridge in 2004 to study for the General Medical Council's professional and linguistic assessment board, a test that would enable him to work as a doctor in the UK.

While in Cambridge, the fortunes of his family in Iraq grew worse. His father fled from Baghdad after being intimidated by Shi'ite militiamen.

.....Kafeel Ahmed, now hovering near death in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, certainly knew Abdulla in Cambridge.

Ahmed was born in Banga-lore, India, in 1979. His parents, both doctors, travelled a great deal through their work, so he and his younger brother, Sabeel, lived with an aunt and attended school with a young relative called Mohammed Haneef. He and the brothers became very close. When they went on to university, Haneef and Sabeel studied medicine while Kafeel studied engineering.

Last week an imam who runs the mosque near the Ahmed family's home said the brothers had joined Tablighi Jamaat, a strict Islamic missionary and revivalist movement.

After obtaining their medical degrees, Sabeel and Haneef sought work in Britain while Kafeel took up a research post at Anglia Ruskin University, which has a campus in Cambridge.

 

Shiraz Maher, a former Cambridge University student, saw Kafeel come under Bilal Abdulla's sway there.

 

Maher had come to know Abdulla well after meeting him the city's Abu Bakr Siddiq mosque. Maher said: "At the time, we were all extremists and . . . Bilal liked the fact that the British and Americans were getting a bloody nose in Iraq."

According to Maher, Kafeel shared a flat in Cambridge with a local activist from Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic political group. It was through this connection that he came to meet Abdulla in 2004.

Maher said: "Kafeel always looked up to and listened to Abdulla and what he had to say. By the time I left Cambridge, Abdulla and Kafeel were best of mates. In the study circle that we used to hold in the Islamic academy, Abdulla very much used to take the lead and he was always the one asking the questions."

At the time Kafeel was working with a research team designing an inkjet to print tactile maps for the blind. A fellow researcher, Snir Dinar, an Israeli, said Kafeel rarely socialised with the group: "Kafeel was a Muslim so he wouldn't join us if we ever went for a drink after work. We knew very little about his lifestyle – except that he always went to the mosque on Fridays."

Sabeel and Haneef, who were working together at Halton hospital in Cheshire, made several visits to Cambridge. Kafeel introduced Sabeel to Bilal Abdulla and they, too, hit it off. Last week Channel 4 News quoted an unnamed friend of the two men saying: "Sabeel and Bilal were like clowns, loud and funny, cracking jokes all the time."

Both Sabeel and Haneef then moved on to work in Liverpool, and last year Haneef applied for a job in the the oncology department of the Gold Coast hospital, 60 miles south of Bris-bane, Australia.

According to Australian authorities, Sabeel attempted to follow him, applying for a post through an Australian government website. He was turned down for lack of experience; he is also said to have failed to meet the necessary language requirements. He stayed on in Liverpool while working at hospitals in Cheshire.

Bilal Abdulla was also on the move. He passed his GMC test and obtained a one-year post last August at Inverclyde Royal hospital in Greenock, Scotland.

He applied through the computerised Medical Training Application Service, which hires doctors without an interview.

"People applied but we had no idea what we were getting," said a senior doctor based in west Scotland. "The system took no account of references and there was no opportunity for previous employers to comment on a doctor's ability or performance."

Before starting the post, Abdulla called to say that he would be two weeks late. Sources at the Inverclyde Royal claim he was in Pakistan at the time.

"There were some problems with a visa and he was about two weeks later getting here," said a hospital source. "There were calls from him about the delay and he was in Pakistan at the time." If so, investigators will want to know if he met Islamic extremists there: Pakistan is known to have been a training ground for Al-Qaeda terrorists.

Abdulla spend eight months at the Inverclyde Royal hospital before moving to the Royal Alexandra hospital in Paisley, where he appears to have been less than devoted to his work.

Colleagues complained that he spent too much time flicking through Islamic websites on the hospital computers. "It was difficult to motivate him. He was definitely distracted while at work," said one.

He was keen to encourage other Muslims. One colleague said he handed her A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. "We spoke briefly and I told him I had a Muslim background. The next time we met he handed me the booklet," she said. The booklet was from Pakistan.

Abdulla's family say his guiding mentor was Sheikh Ahmad al-Qubeisi, an outspoken Baghdad cleric who has praised suicide bombing on his weekly Dubai television show.

One of Abdulla's British-based uncles said: "When Ahmad came on television he would say that he knew him. He called him his best friend. I think he brainwashed him."

Speaking from Baghdad, Qubeisi last week declined to say whether he knew Abdulla, observing only that: "I am a figure known by millions of Muslims around the world, some of who may be good, others could be bad or evil." Qubeisi revealed, however, that late last year had received an unusual telephone call from the UK. It was from a man with joint Iraqi and British nationality, he said, although he declined to identify him.

"An Iraqi man called me from England," Qubeisi said. "He asked me whether it was right for him to avenge his people in Iraq and carry out attacks against London." Qubeisi said he did not sanction an attack because the man should have entered the country as a "fighter".

He said: "Wars are manly with rules and regulations. Either you enter the country as a fighter, and fight them under such circumstances, and then you will be regarded as a shaheed [martyr]. But if you entered the country under any other circumstance . . . then your acts will not be considered as jihad."

Did Britain's GCHQ monitor the call to Qubeisi? It was the sort of communications "chatter" that was leading MI5 to conclude that Al-Qaeda – particularly its Iraqi offshoot – was planning attacks in Britain.

Three months ago The Sunday Times revealed that Britain's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre had concluded that Al-Qaeda planners were preparing for an attack in the UK when Tony Blair stepped down.

A report said: "While networks linked to AQ [Al-Qaeda] core pose the greatest threat to the UK, the intelligence during this quarter has highlighted the potential threat from other areas, particularly AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq]."

In the same month Canon Andrew White, a British cleric working in Baghdad, says he met "a very bad man" who he was later told was "closely connected to Al-Qaeda". The man gave White a cryptic warning, telling him: "Those who cure you will kill you".

This now appears to have been a message warning of an attack by doctors.White passed on the general warning but not the exact wording. The security services were aware of

the general threat, and MI5 had the names of some of those who would be arrested in the past nine days on its watch lists. But they were not under 24-hour surveillance because they were not regarded as serious threats.

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