Indian doctors fear backlash after British bomb plot

INDIA: Indian doctors seeking better job opportunities in the West fear they may be unfairly targeted after the British government said it would review how it recruited foreign doctors following last week’s bomb plot.

Eight people, at least four of them foreign doctors, have been arrested over an attack on a Scottish airport and an attempt to explode two car bombs in London. Two of the doctors are Indian.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ordered a review of recruitment to the country’s state-run health service, where nearly 40 percent of registered doctors are foreign trained. Indians are the largest group among them.

Australian police were questioning Mohamed Haneef, 27, one of the Indians, detained while trying to leave Australia on Monday. Many Indian newspapers quoted Haneef’s relatives in India as saying he was innocent.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he had spoken to Brown on Wednesday and assured him of any help London needed in its investigations.

“I think labelling Indians as terrorists, Pakistanis as terrorists, I think these labels are best avoided,” state-run Doordarshan News TV channel showed him telling journalists.

“Terrorists are terrorists. They have no particular religion, they have no particular community,” Singh said.

“I do not think it helps us in understanding the situation or in dealing with it effectively if we remain confined to these stereotyped classifications.”

Young Indian doctors, many of whom have friends working abroad or aspire to themselves, echoed those views. “This is like tarnishing all Indian doctors as being terrorists,” said Ashish Jain, 30, a paediatrician in New Delhi.

“Just because two Indian doctors may be involved in the attacks, they can’t punish all of us. I believe it will affect our chances of going overseas.”

“Many young doctors want to go to countries like Britain and the United States because working conditions there are better, the pay is better and research opportunities are better,” said a junior resident doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), who did not want to give her name.

Many young doctors at AIIMS, one of India’s top medical colleges, said Britain was becoming an increasingly difficult place to get jobs due to tough immigration rules. Haneef studied medicine at the private Ambedkar Medical College in the IT hub of Bangalore.

His family said he was innocent.

Meanwhile British police had about one more day to question six of eight suspects arrested in connection with attempted bombings in London and Glasgow, as a stronger link has reportedly begun to emerge between the attackers and Al-Qaeda.

Police had until Saturday to continue interrogating the group of suspects, all of whom are in a central London police station, before they would have to either charge them, release them, or appeal for more time to question them.

Under British laws, terror suspects can be held for up to 28 days without being charged with an offence, subject to regular approval from a judge.

British newspapers were reporting, meanwhile, that investigators were probing the role Al-Qaeda played in the botched attacks, in which two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters and nails were discovered in London and blazing Jeep Cherokee rammed into Glasgow airport’s main terminal about a week ago.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown had already hinted that Al-Qaeda-linked militants might be behind the attacks, having said on Sunday: “It is clear that we are dealing in general terms with people who are associated with Al-Qaeda in a number of incidents that have happened across the world.”

Eirlier a British court convicted a man on Thursday described by police as a “sleeper” preparing terrorist attacks, whose hoarde of al Qaeda computer material suggested striking nightclubs and airports.

Omar Altimimi, 37, from Bolton in northern England, was convicted in Manchester Crown Court of six charges of possessing material for the purpose of terrorism and two money laundering charges.

The head of the anti-terrorism unit for Greater Manchester police described Altimimi as “a ‘sleeper’ remaining in the shadows waiting and preparing for action.”

“We will never know exactly what Altimimi was preparing to do but it was clear he had support and links with terrorists across the world,” Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Porter added.

New Delhi, London, Friday, Reuters, AFP