Terrorism never fails to disappoint. Just when you think you've reached the lowest limit of despicable behavior, terrorists find a way to hit an even lower low.
This time it's a murderous terrorist doctor in Iraq, according to the U.K. Independent. The article refers to the doctor as an "insurgent," but the use of the term "insurgent" is even more preposterous than usual in this context because a doctor is not even remotely a battlefield combatant.
Here's what the terrorist doctor did, according to the report:
When policemen, soldiers and officials in Kirkuk who were injured in insurgent attacks arrived in the emergency room of the hospital, they hoped their chances of surviving had gone up as doctors tended their wounds.
In fact, many of the wounded were almost certain to die because one of the doctors at the Republic Hospital was a member of an insurgent cell. Pretending to treat the injured men, he killed 43 of them by secretly administering lethal injections, a police inquiry has revealed.
"He was called Dr Louay and when the terrorists had failed to kill a policeman or a soldier he would finish them off," Colonel Yadgar Shukir Abdullah Jaff, a senior Kirkuk police chief, told The Independent. "He gave them a high dosage of a medicine which increased their bleeding so they died from loss of blood."
Dr Louay carried out his murder campaign over an eight to nine-month period, say police. He appeared to be a hard working assistant doctor who selflessly made himself available for work in any part of the hospital, which is the largest in Kirkuk.
He was particularly willing to assist in the emergency room. With 272 soldiers, policemen and civilians killed and 1,220 injured in insurgent attacks in Kirkuk in 2005, the doctors were rushed off their feet and glad of any help they could get. Nobody noticed how many patients were dying soon after being tended by their enthusiastic young colleague.
Dr Louay was finally arrested only after the leader of the cell to which he belonged, named Malla Yassin, was captured and confessed. "I was really shocked that a doctor and an educated men should do such a thing," said Col Jaff.
This is pure and simple murder. Let us not hear foolish sympathy for the "insurgents" again. They are the lowest of the low.
Update 3/26/06:
The Washington Post reports that the doctor has confessed ot killing at least 35 Iraqi police officers and army soldiers:
BAGHDAD, March 26 -- A doctor in the northern city of Kirkuk has admitted to killing at least 35 Iraqi police officers and Army soldiers by giving them lethal injections, reopening their wounds and engaging in other deadly acts as they were being treated in Kirkuk Hospital, according to Kurdish security sources and Kurdish television.
On Sunday, Kurdish TV aired what it said was the doctor's taped confession, in which he told police that he sympathized with the radical Sunni Arab insurgent group Ansar al-Sunna, which paid him to kill the men. He worked with the group, he said, because "I hate the Americans and what they've done to Iraq." [And therefore the logical solution was for the doctor to engage in heinous acts of murder that dwarfed in cruelty any supposed offenses of the Americans.]
"I injected more than 35 policeman and soldiers, including officers and some who were slightly injured," the doctor, identified by a Kurdish security official as Luay Omar Taie, said in the taped statement. "I used to stop the breathing machines or cut the electricity in the operations room or reopen the wounds."
Any suggestions for how this doctor should be punished?
Gina,
Isn't this despicable. I can't imagine why people support terrorism - and they do so often here at home.
Posted by: Washington | March 23, 2006 at 10:53 PM