(This story was first reported in March 2006.)
“I made a mixture of drugs and injected them. They were dead in three hours.”
A young doctor in Kirkuk, Iraq killed at least 43 injured soldiers by lethal injection after they were brought to his hospital for treatment. Dr. Louay belonged to a terrorist cell and gave his victims drugs that would cause them to bleed to death. He was arrested in 2006.
The Independent reported:
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.
Hat Tip K. Solomon
