If a doctor workng under a tyrannical regime uses his skill to patch up victims of torture, is he doing evil, or can he plead that he has no choice?

From the Mail Online:

A doctor involved in horrific torture by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen is working in British hospitals.

In an astonishing immigration scandal, border officials have allowed the suspected war criminal to treat thousands of British patients.

Dr Mohammed Kassim Al-Byati was given a permit to work as a doctor in the NHS by the Labour government in 2004.

Checks failed to uncover his history of working for the notorious Iraqi Intelligence Agency, which ran the country in a reign of terror during the Saddam years.

His job was to patch up torture victims so that they could be subjected to more appalling treatment.

In 2007, Al-Byati contacted the Home Office to confess to his horrific past so that he could claim asylum.

But, incredibly, this did not prevent him from carrying on earning tens of thousands of pounds working at a hospital in Wales.

Even now, despite his file being referred to a specialist war crimes unit, he remains cleared by the General Medical Council, and has been working in the West Midlands.

Whitehall sources say the case shows the total shambles which UKBA [United Kingdom Border Agency] became under Labour.

At its heart lies the Human Rights Act and a little-known EU directive which permitted the doctor to work even when his past was known. …

Under Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime countless Iraqis were tortured, maimed and imprisoned.

Favoured methods used by his secret police included eye-gouging; piercing of hands with an electric drill; suspension from a ceiling; electric shock; rape and other forms of sexual abuse; beating of the soles of feet; mock executions; extinguishing cigarettes on the body, and acid baths.

A case history seen by the Mail shows that Al-Byati arrived in Britain on a six-month visitor visa in January 2000, nine years after the end of the first Gulf War which left Saddam in power.

Officials twice extended his leave to stay so he could undertake clinical attachments as a doctor.

In January 2004, by which time Iraq had been invaded again, a work permit was granted and he was employed at a hospital in Wolverhampton until February 2007.

At this point, Al-Byati claimed asylum. In his witness statement he says he worked for the Iraqi Intelligence Agency.

In March 2007, while being interviewed by UKBA, Al-Byati stated that he patched people up after torture and was aware that the victims were returning to torture, but did not feel he could do anything about it.

A month later, his file was referred to the war crimes unit.

In 2008, he applied for permission to work as he had the offer of a four-month contract with a hospital in Wales.

Normally, asylum seekers are barred from working. But there is an EU directive that allows an asylum seeker to work if the case has not been dealt with for 12 months or more through no fault of their own.

As a result, since 2008 Al-Byati has been working full-time as a locum registrar and occasionally as a consultant in the West Midlands. …

One perversity of the asylum system is that the worse the crimes an applicant has been involved in, the more likely he is to be allowed to stay.

He can claim that, if sent back to the country where the offences were committed, he may be subjected to degrading treatment, which is not allowed under the Human Rights Act.

“Degrading treatment” is of course just what such savages need. Rather than physical torture, they should suffer humiliation. For men who belong to an “honor” society, where saving face is the highest good, humiliation would be an apt punishment. In any decent evaluation, Al-Byati, by working with and for torturers, abased himself: if further abasement hurts him, what injustice is done?

The Human Rights Act has turned values upside down:

In the past some asylum seekers have made their past exploits sound worse to bolster their case.

A report last year branded Britain a ‘safe haven’ for war criminals with hundreds of people wanted for murder and torture living here free from prosecution. …

Al-Byati complains that his life is now difficult.

But Al-Byati said:  ‘I can’t go out of this country. I want to see my 70-year-old mother and my brother in America. My wife has family in Jordan, she wants to go there. But we have no passport. It’s like my wife and children are in prison.

‘I can’t get a job, I can’t progress. To be honest, I’m very upset.’

No doubt the compassioneers of the churches and the sentimentalists of the Left will find it in their ever-bleeding hearts to pity him.

But does he deserve any pity, any mercy at all, do you think?