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Friday, Dec 21, 2012 12:45 PM UTC

UK doctor stripped of license over death of Iraqi

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Topics: From the Wires,

LONDON (AP) — A British doctor was stripped of his medical license Friday for misconduct over the death of an Iraqi man who was beaten and killed while in the custody of British troops.

Derek Keilloh treated Baha Mousa, a hotel clerk who died at a British base after being detained in Basra in September 2003 during a sweep for insurgents.

Keilloh, then a 28-year-old captain in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, tried unsuccessfully to revive Mousa, but denied knowledge of the scale of the man’s injuries.

A public inquiry found that Mousa had sustained 93 injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose.

Last week the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service ruled that Keilloh knew of the injuries and failed to adequately examine Mousa’s body. It said he also failed to inform senior officers of what was going on and protect other detainees from further mistreatment.

The tribunal also ruled that Keilloh engaged in “misleading and dishonest conduct” by maintaining under oath that he had seen no injuries to Mousa’s body.

On Friday the tribunal said that even though Keilloh had not harmed Mousa — and had tried his best to save him in a “highly charged, chaotic, tense and stressful” situation — the doctor should be barred from practicing medicine for at least five years.

“The panel has identified serious breaches of good medical practice and, given the gravity and nature of the extent and context of your dishonesty, it considers that your misconduct is fundamentally incompatible with continued registration,” said Dr. Brian Alderman, a member of the tribunal.

The death of Mousa and mistreatment of other detainees was one of the darkest episodes in Britain’s six-year deployment in southern Iraq, which ended in 2009.

Britain’s defense authorities eventually apologized for the mistreatment of Mousa and nine other Iraqis and paid a 3-million-pound ($4.9-million) settlement. Six soldiers were cleared of wrongdoing at a court martial, while another pleaded guilty and served a year in jail.

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