For the British public, the prospect of highly educated professionals as terror suspects is a chilling departure from the home-grown Muslim terrorists, many with family roots in Pakistan, who have been implicated in previous conspiracies here.
It may also prompt a debate over whether Britain’s health system should have tightened its regulations for hiring foreign doctors before last year, when it was possible for doctors to move here and practice without a work permit, provided they established their medical credentials.
and is terror a result of poverty, ignorance or whatever?
Doctors and law-enforcement officials struggled to explain what might have drawn these men into violence.
“There’s no explanation at this stage why they’re doctors, other than that it’s a perfect cover,” a police official said, on condition of anonymity. “It seems at odds with their profession, which is to look after people.”
Abhay Chopada, a colorectal surgeon who emigrated from India in 1994, said that the suspects should be thought of “not as doctors, but as terrorists.” Perhaps they had been radicalized by the Iraq war and brought their grievances with them to Britain, he said.
Prasad Rao, chairman of the British International Doctors’ Association, called the apparent link to terrorism “beyond belief.”
“Even if I were to come across my enemy, my duty is to heal the sick,” he said. “How could I remotely plan to kill and maim innocent people? I have no words to describe this.”
However, Sandy Bell, the director of homeland security at the Royal United Services Institute, a private policy research body, said that she found it plausible that doctors could become terrorists.
“In the end, these people are attracted to the U.K., to the medical profession, because they are dedicated and bright,” she said in an interview. “That not only makes them attractive to any profession, but also to terrorist organizations. It doesn’t surprise me that they have been targeted.”
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