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6 Docs, 1 Med Student in UK Bomb Case

By Martha Neil

July 3, 2007, 9:25 pm CDT

Updated: It’s now official: a total of six doctors, plus a medical student, plus a spouse who worked as a medical assistant are being held as suspects in the United Kingdom car bombing case.

As ABAJournal.com reported yesterday, it’s unusual for highly educated professionals to be suspected in such a scheme. But “at least” six physicians and a medical student working in English and Scottish hospitals, many of them with ties to foreign countries, allegedly were involved in the failed plot to blow up fuel-laden cars in London and Glasgow on Friday and Saturday of last week, according to AP.

All seven medical professionals apparently are among the eight suspects currently being held in the case. Authorities were able to track down at least some of the suspects very quickly because they recovered intact cell phones containing critical phone numbers from the cars that did not blow up, the London Times reports.

Now, as the New York Times puts it, British authorities and the public must adjust their thinking to comprehend “the possibility … that a terrorism network, apparently composed at least in part of foreign doctors, had developed within the publicly financed National Health Service.”

It appears that the group of medical professionals must have met and hatched their alleged scheme once most were already working in hospitals in England and Scotland, a subsequent AP story says. That makes sense to Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now working for a London think tank. The “likely scenario,” he says, “is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK.”

No one has yet been charged in the case, and more suspects are being sought. However, most are reportedly already in custody.

(Originally published 2:25 p.m.)