Leader of group that celebrated Hamas attacks is NHS GP under different name | UK News

The leader of the UK branch of an extremist Islamic group has been exposed as working as a GP in the NHS under a different name.

An investigation by the Mail on Sunday found Abdul Wahid, who heads the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT) group in the UK, also works as an NHS doctor and has done for more than 20 years.

The HT group – banned in Germany and a dozen other countries – has called for ‘jihad’ at an anti-Israel protest and described Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 as a ‘very welcome punch on the nose’.

Meanwhile he’s been practicing as a family doctor under his real name, Dr Wahid Asif Shaida, the Mail reports.

HT caused outrage last weekend when members chanted ‘jihad’ during a rally outside the Egyptian and Turkish embassies in London and called for ‘Muslim armies’ to attack Israel.

Another senior member of HT asked supporters: ‘What is the solution to liberate people in the concentration camp called Palestine?’

They chanted back: ‘Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!’

Home Secretary Suella Braverman criticised the police for not arresting the men. But Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley insisted no crime had been committed as ‘jihad’ had meanings other than calling for holy war.

Following the protests, Wahid returned to work at Welbeck Road Surgery in the London suburb of Harrow – and patients say they had no idea about his double life.

He’s practiced at the surgery since 2002 and is in a senior role as a mentor and trainer for recently qualified doctors, according to the surgery’s website.

Wahid qualified as a doctor in 1991, and before that he was educated at Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood – where fees are £25,000 a year.

Some questioned whether his leadership of the HT group meant he was capable of fairly treating Jewish, female or LGBTQ+ patients.

Tony Ryan, 80, a retired rail worker, said: ‘That’s scandalous, a man of his position should know better. The surgery should have a word with him, and if he does not stop, they should part ways.’

After Hamas gunmen carried out their murderous attacks earlier this month, the Facebook page of Wahid’s HT group hailed the atrocity as having ‘ignited a wave of joy and elation among Muslims globally’.

Days later, Wahid gave a talk on YouTube, praising the ‘brave mujahideen’, or jihad fighters, who ‘gave the enemy a punch on the nose, and it’s a very welcome punch on the nose’.

The UK government has faced repeated calls to ban HT, which wants the whole Islamic world to unite under one leader, and for Britain to fall under the rule of that ‘caliph’.

Wahid has been the leader of the UK group for at least 17 years, but has, until now, managed to keep his NHS career hidden.

Dr Shaida confirmed he was also known as Abdul Wahid but denied his HT group was ‘extremist’, saying the word does not have an agreed meaning and is used as a ‘pejorative term.’

He added: ‘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.’

He 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’.

Professor Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert, said: ‘A GP who glorifies Islamic extremism like this not only puts his patients at risk, but is a risk to national security.’

Labour MP Khalid Mahmood, added that Wahid needed to declare his HT role to patients ‘and let them make a choice on whether they want to see him’.

The General Medical Council, which has the power to strike doctors from the register, declined to comment.

Experts believe HT, which does not recognise the UK’s legal system, has several thousand members. Ex-members have said it behaves like a ‘cult’, a claim repeated in parliament.

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