'Doctors without Morals' - What happened to the British medics who went to join terrorist group Isis?

What happened to the British medics who went to join terrorist group Isis are there more willing to join? (Guardian).

The Observer revealed in March that nine British medical students had crossed the Turkish border into Islamic State territory. As their families despair of seeing them again, what happened next?

It is almost four months since this newspaper revealed that he and eight other British-Sudanese doctors had crossed the Syrian border at Tel Abyad to join Islamic State and answer its call for doctors.

Since the Britons disappeared into Isis’s self-proclaimed caliphate, the Observer has collated testimony from family members, friends and former classmates – speaking for the first time, on condition of anonymity – in an attempt to reconstruct what happened to the five women and four men. Were they safe? Did they want to come home?

Their accounts reveal high-level talks took place to rescue the nine, that they remain in contact with their parents, and that more young British medics than previously thought may have travelled from the Sudanese capital to join Isis.

They also indicate that all were indoctrinated during their studies at Khartoum’s private University of Medical Sciences and Technology by a seemingly benign Islamic organisation that friends claim was a well-oiled “base operation” for Isis to recruit young medics.

More young doctors, they say, have been brainwashed by Isis and remain in Khartoum. Two weeks ago a second group of 12 medical students from the university, including seven Britons, arrived in Turkey in an attempt to cross into Syria.

So far, two brothers from Leicester have been intercepted on their way to the Syrian border and last week were returned to Khartoum. On Saturday night The Foreign Office confirmed it was working with Turkish police to try to prevent the remaining five Britons reaching Isis. At least 17 young British doctors are known to have attempted the journey from Khartoum to Syria. How many more are ready to follow?

“What is concerning is that the students who have gone are not the only ones recruited; there are reports of more students currently studying there who have been indoctrinated but have not been told to go,” said a sibling of one of the nine medics inside Syria.

It remains unclear if the British female doctors such as Lena have been married. Although many female foreign arrivals quickly become “jihadi brides,” activists in Raqqa say that Isis’s foreign doctors are viewed differently, allowing them to work unmarried. The caliphate’s strict segregation rules – female medics can operate only on women – and a shortage of female doctors have amplified their worth. Hmmm......Close down that Jihadi breeding nest.Read the full story here.

Sudan - Israeli planes bombed weapons factory near Khartoum.

Sudan - Israeli planes bombed weapons factory near Khartoum.(AA).Sudan said on Wednesday that four planes had bombed a weapons factory in Khartoum the previous night, blaming Israeli for the surprise raids. “We think Israel did the bombing,” Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman Sudan said on Wednesday that four planes had bombed a weapons factory in Khartoum the previous night, blaming Israeli for the surprise raids. “We think Israel did the bombing,” Sudan’s Culture and Information Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman  told a news conference. “We reserve the right to react at a place and time we choose.” The foreign ministry of Israel, which has long accused Khartoum of serving as a base for militants from the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, refused to comment. Osman said four aircraft were involved in the attack, which occurred at about midnight (21:00 GMT) at the Yarmouk military manufacturing facility in the south of the Sudanese capital. Evidence pointing to Israel was found among remnants of the explosives, he said. Residents of the area earlier told AFP an aircraft or missile flew over the facility shortly before it exploded and burst into flames. An AFP reporter several kilometers (miles) away saw two or three fires flaring across a wide area, with heavy smoke and intermittent flashes of white light bursting above the state-owned Yarmouk factory. “I heard a sound like a plane in the sky, but I didn't see any light from a plane. Then I heard two explosions, and fire erupted in the compound,” said a resident who asked to be identified only as Faize. A woman living south of the compound also reported two initial blasts. “I saw a plane coming from east to west and I heard explosions and there was a short length of time between the first one and the second one,” she said, asking not to be named. “Then I saw fire and our neighbour's house was hit by shrapnel, causing minor damage. The windows of my own house rattled after the second explosion.” Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Mohamed Hussein and senior officials visited the site of the explosion and held an emergency meeting with top army generals while security forces sealed off the area surrounding the complex and halted traffic. In 1998, the United States cruise missiles bombed a Khartoum pharmaceutical factory suspected of links to al-Qaeda in the aftermath of the terror group's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people. Sudan has been a major hub for al-Qaeda militants and a transit for weapon smugglers and African migrant traffickers.Read the full story here.