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Doctor struck off for having links to Tamil Tigers

20 Feb 2012 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

A doctor has been struck off after being accused of having links to the Tamil Tigers.

Dr. Muregeshu Vinayagamoorthy wanted to return to his GP surgery in Enfield, north London, after he spent four-and-a-half years in a US prison for providing material support to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers.

He was detained following a taped conversation with undercover US government agents in which he attempted to bribe them into removing the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) from the country’s list of designated foreign terrorist organisations.

Dr. Vinayagamoorthy, 62, denies being an LTTE member or supporter but pleaded guilty to the offence, committed in September 2005.

A General Medical Council disciplinary panel ruled yesterday that his fitness to practise was impaired because of his conviction and conduct that was “fundamentally incompatible” with his continued registration.

The doctor claimed he was set up and there was no evidence against him but his “fate was tied to others” and he took the offer of a “global” plea so that his co-defendants would not have to go to trial.

The hearing in Manchester was told it was an “isolated incident” in an otherwise exemplary life of seeking aid to others.

His barrister, Richard Kemp, submitted that in “unusual circumstances” he had made a “terrible decision” on what he thought were valid reasons for furthering a peaceful resolution in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Tigers have been involved in a protracted civil war against the Sinhalese government in which suicide bombing was utilised, notably the assassination of Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 by a young woman - thought to be the first attack of its kind.

Giving evidence, Dr. Vinayagamoorthy accepted he had met a former leader of the LTTE on three occasions and shared a house in Nottingham for seven years with a man who was also jailed in the US after the authorities said he was a senior arms procurement agent for the terror group.

The panel accepted he was principally a doctor and a humanitarian who had supported the Tamil people in a peaceful resolution to the conflict, but his contact with senior figures in the organisation “could have left you in no doubt about the actions it was prepared to take to achieve its ends”.

Panel chairman David Kyle said: “Much was made by Mr. Kemp, in his submission, that yours was not a terrorist offence, as would be commonly understood, because it did not involve violence by you or support by you for violence by others.

”In the panel’s view, however, this misses the point. By agreeing to be the means of communication, you were lending yourself to involvement in corruption of considerable seriousness.

”Your prosecution for a terrorist-related offence flowed from the fact that the party expected to benefit from the corrupt activity was a proscribed terrorist organisation known by you to have pursued its aims by violent means.

”In these circumstances, the panel has concluded that your conduct and conviction were, by themselves, so serious as to be fundamentally incompatible with continued registration and that a period of suspension would be insufficient to protect the public interest and would not maintain public confidence in the profession.”

Dr. Vinayagamoorthy came to the UK in 1978 from his home village in the far north of Sri Lanka when riots broke out in the country and interrupted his medical studies.

He qualified the same year at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and went on to work at various practices in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire before he and his wife moved from Nottingham to London in 2001.

He had been suspended from practising at his surgery in Edmonton which he shared with his wife, Pushpam. (Source: Hillingdon Times)

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Doctor struck off for having links to Tamil Tigers

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