NHS GP who runs UK wing of newly banned Islamist
terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir is suspended
The GP has been banned from working for the NHS
but is still a registered doctor
By JOHN ELY
SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED:
13:16 GMT, 23 January 2024 | UPDATED: 01:39 GMT, 24 January 2024
A doctor
who leads the British wing of a now-banned Islamist terror group has been
suspended as a GP, it can be revealed today.
Abdul Wahid
was last year exposed by the Mail as having practised as a doctor for more than
20 years under his real name, Dr Wahid Shaida.
As head of
Hizb ut-Tahrir in the UK, he was shamed for gloating about the October 7th
atrocities carried out by Hamas, who slaughtered more than 1,400 Israelis in a
string of surprise attacks.
In the
aftermath of the attack, Dr Shaida described the Hamas terrorists as 'brave
mujahideen' who gave the enemy 'a very welcome punch on the nose.'
He also
told a baying crowd at a pro-Palestine rally outside the Egyptian embassy in
London: 'Victory is coming and everyone has to choose a side. Whose side are
you going to be on?'
Dr Shaida has spent more than 20 years practising as a
family doctor under his real name, with few realising his support for an
extremist Islamist group
Dr Wahid Shaida previously worked as a medic at GP
Direct in Harrow but has now been suspended from treating NHS patients and
removed from the practice's website
NHS London,
the regional branch of the NHS for the capital, today confirmed he had been
suspended from NHS list of approved .
A
spokesperson told MailOnline: 'We take any issues relating to professional
conduct seriously and have procedures in place to make sure that individuals
are fit to work in the NHS.
'We can
confirm Dr Wahid Shaida has been suspended from the NHS primary care performers
list.'
Dr Shaida
has worked at the GP Direct practice in the north-west London borough of Harrow
since 2002.
He is no
longer mentioned on the surgery's website, however.
Dr Shaida,
who lives in a £850,000 semi-detached home a short walk from that same
practice, was previously described as having an interest in training future
medics.
The website
read: 'His special interests lie in the field of medical education. He is a GP
trainer for recently qualified doctors.
Despite
being suspended, Dr Shaida, who graduated from medical school in 1991, faces no
technical restrictions on working privately.
The UK's
medical regulator the General Medical Council (GMC), which has the power to
suspend or strike off doctors in Britain, has him listed on its register as
'registered with a licence to practise'.
This means
he is, to all intents and purposes, a fully-qualified doctor with no issues
regarding his work in the GMC's eyes.
The GMC
said: 'We are only able to confirm the publicly available information about
individual doctors as it appears on the medical register.
'Dr Shaida
is registered with a licence to practise.'
This is
despite the GMC having received a number of complaints from members of the
public about whether Dr Shaida would be able to treat Jewish and gay patients
correctly, since his organisation has a record of anti-Semitism and homophobia.
Hizb
ut-Tahrir is an international group dedicated to creating an Islamic
'caliphate' governed by Sharia law.
It is
banned in several Arab and Asian countries, as well as in Germany.
Britain's
ban finally went through last week, after MPs backed the plans to make it a
criminal offence to belong to HT or display support for it in public.
Tony Blair
first vowed to ban the group in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.
David Cameron also promised to outlaw the group in 2010, which he described as
a 'conveyor belt to terrorism'.
A fresh
review was ordered by ex-Home Secretary Suella Braverman last year after the
group’s response to the October 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas terrorists.
After Hamas
gunmen carried out their murderous attacks, the Facebook page of Wahid's Hizb
ut-Tahrir group hailed the atrocity as having 'ignited a wave of joy and
elation among Muslims globally'.
Hizb
ut-Tahrir caused further outrage last year in the weeks that followed during a
rally when members chanted 'jihad' during a rally outside the Egyptian and
Turkish embassies in London and called for 'Muslim armies' to attack Israel.
During this
rally a senior member of the group asked supporters: 'What is the solution to
liberate people in the concentration camp called Palestine?'
They
chanted back: 'Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!'
Ms Braverman criticised the police for not
arresting the men.
But Met
chief Sir Mark Rowley insisted no crime had been committed as 'jihad' had
meanings other than calling for holy war.
Dr Shaida
has previously denied his HT group is 'extremist', adding the word does not
have an agreed meaning and is used as a 'pejorative term'.
He also
said: 'I attend to my professional duties and commitments diligently, aiming
for the best care of my patients at all times. For reasons of professional
probity I keep a very clear line between my professional and political life.'
Dr Shaida
said his group was calling on the Muslim world to intervene militarily to
rescue the people of Gaza 'who have been subjected to horrific conditions for
16 years'.
He sparked
further outrage in December when, during a heated debate with Piers Morgan on
his TalkTV show Uncensored, Dr Shaida refused to acknowledge that Hamas
indiscriminately slaughtered civilians - and labelled them a 'resistance
organisation'.
'(What
happened on October 7) is a resistance,' he said.
'Resistance
is a right in Islam, it's a right in international law, a right that Churchill
said in his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, he wrote in that book it
is a primary right of men to kill and die for the land they live in.'
He then
tried to describe the slaughter of civilians on October 7 as 'appalling', 'if'
it had happened, before acknowledging that they had been killed by people he
described as 'resisting occupation.'
He added:
'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter,' but this prompted
Morgan's curt reply 'Bull****'.
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