Remix News has run a series of articles and videos on the growth of foreigners in Western healthcare systems, which the left uses as a powerful argument to justify ever-higher levels of immigration. However, the latest case of the Saudi doctor who killed six in the Christmas market terror attack in Magdeburg last year, reveals the incredibly lax standards that allow foreigners to begin serving as doctors in foreign countries in many cases.
By all outward appearances, Taleb al-Abdulmohsen was a success story of integration, serving as a doctor of psychiatry, and was even featured on the BBC for his efforts to bring Saudi women into Germany.
However, this integration story has a dark and unbelievable background, and it may illustrate how many Western countries are taking incredible shortcuts to pack their system with as many foreign doctors and healthworkers as possible.
Colleagues knew al-Abdulmohsen as “Dr. Google” due to his inability to make a diagnosis without consulting a search engine, He also received his medical license despite being convicted for death threats. His own work in Saudi Arabia was sketchy at best, and only now that he has murdered and wounded dozens of people, is his whole questionable background being revealed. The reality was that he was a violent fraud the entire time.
Welt did a special report on the al-Abdulmohsen’s background, writing: “What costs every medical student in Germany at least 10 years of hard work was simply handed to the Magdeburg attacker: a license to practice medicine and a specialist. How could he possibly take the German authorities by surprise with unrecognized papers?”
The report details how al-Abdulmohsen tried numerous times to obtain his specialist license from the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Medical Association in 2013, including with emails and calls; however, the association noted he had missing documents, including proof of a license to practice medicine. The Saudi began threatening the association to the point that he threatened that “”something bad” with “international significance” would happen if his license was not approved. He even referenced the terror attack at the Boston Marathon that had caused global horror just days before.
German Christmas market terror: Suspect skipped his Berlin court date just day before attack, Saudi Arabia had sent warnings as well
A criminal complaint had been filed against the Magdeburg terror suspect, but authorities failed to ever speak to him. pic.twitter.com/Rxrq7UhzWB
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 23, 2024For that offense, Al-Abdulmohsen was put on trial and convicted, resulting in a fine of €900. That should have been the end of his medical career. The man was not fit to provide medical advice on an internet forum, let alone receive a prestigious medical license in a specialist field, but he eventually did.
Approximately 11 years later, as Al-Abdulmohsen’s vehicle crashed through the Magdeburg Christmas market, he was already a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, with all the certifications he needed issued by the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Medical Association, the same one he threatened with terror attacks.
“According to German regulations, this should never have happened. Psychiatry is considered one of the most demanding medical specialties, only a few candidates make it to the exam. The failure rate was the third highest in Germany in 2021,” according to Welt.
Notably, Al-Abdulmohsen claimed to work as a psychiatrist for four years in Saudi Arabia; however, there is often no way of confirming the background of foreigners, especially in countries where corruption is rife and certificates and references can be easily fabricated. However, even if true, his efforts to receive a specialist medical license should not have been possible.
Examination regulations state that doctors can only apply to take a specialist examination “if they have a medical license or an equivalent level of knowledge from their completed medical training.” However, psychiatry was still a new medical field in Saudi Arabia at the time, and psychotherapy methods based on Western standards are still rejected there until this day. In other words, Al-Abdulmohsen should not have even been eligible to take the exam.
Welt spoke to the medical association, and they ignored his lack of proof and that they simply relied on questions about his CV to determine that he could take the exam.
“The points were clarified,” the association said, then deciding that “Mr. A. should be admitted to the specialist examination based on the documents submitted,” without the “knowledge test.” In other words, they simply waived “the mandatory core of every licensing procedure.”
In fact, the association even attempted to present the case as totally fine, saying Al-Abdulmohsen was able to compensate for “the significant differences in training” between Saudi Arabia and Germany through his “professional experience and lifelong learning.”
Dr. Google and his history of fraud
However, the doctor’s own colleagues say they cannot understand how this decision was made. In a report from Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, they nicknamed him “Dr. Google” because he “had to look up information on the Internet before making any diagnosis.”
It gets worse from there, with the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Medical Association stating that the man “submitted certificates as part of the recognition process for specialist psychiatry and psychotherapy, which show that Mr. A. worked full-time as a doctor in training in all the named clinics.”
However, the clinics that Al-Abdulmohsen cited show that he was building a fraudulent resume that misrepresented his background. The fact that he did this already in Germany calls into question his entire background in Saudi Arabia. The University Hospital Hamburg Eppendorf (UKE) for example, notes that he did not work at the hospital between October 2006 to February 2008, as he claimed. Instead, “this person was at the UKE from November 2007 to November 2008 as part of a one-year internship without pay.” He was “not involved in treatment processes.”
LWL University Hospital Bochum, the Hannover Medical School (MHH), and the Institute for Music Physiology (IMMM) also stated that al-Abdulmohsen served as a doctor in an internship.
At MHH, he only did “research” there for a few months, and during that time, al-Abdulmohsen accused a senior psychiatrist of “stealing” his ideas about using botox as an antidepressant treatment. The Saudi even published the allegations in a pseudoscientific research journal that listed its publishing address as Dubai. He also claimed to be a psychiatric scientist at the University of Greifswald, but the university claims that he never worked there.
The man worked in seven German hospitals, but only worked as a doctor independently in three of them, according to Welt research, and only for a few months at a time. He only had 20 months as an assistant doctor instead of the 60 months required for a specialist examination. The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Medical Association nevertheless awarded him the status of licensed doctor without any “level of knowledge” test.
Even more shocking is that the Saudi was recognized as being mentally unstable before he even received his medical license, with the Rostock criminal police labeling his file with a request to be reviewed “under the PsychKG.” This means the officers believed due to his terror threats, he was perceived as a psychological risk, and were considering putting him in a closed psychiatric facility. However, no action was ever taken. In fact, a few months later, he successfully passed his psychiatric examination.
The question then arises as to why al-Abdulmohsen was awarded his license despite all the red flags. Another worrying trend may provide the answer. It was also revealed this month that German teachers tend to give better grades to foreigners than German natives, and part of the reason for this, according to researchers, is that teachers feel they must compensate for children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds by rewarding them with better grades.
The same psychology could have been at work in awarding al-Abdulmohsen his specialist license without even an exam. The urge for medical professionals to feature more diversity is strong due to a strong left-wing ideology rampant through both education and medical fields, which could have prompted the medical association, despite receiving death threats from al-Abdulmohsen, to push through his application without the proper safeguards.
As is well known, perhaps the even more egregious failure was Germany’s security services for failing to prevent the terror attack despite his many threats over the years, even as he served as a doctor.
🇩🇪 Germany's Christmas market terror attack could've been prevented, and the proof is now overwhelming.
Taleb Al Abdulmohsen presented a clear threat and authorities were warned dozens of times, says AfD politician @GottfriedCurio, who attended an interior ministry briefing on… pic.twitter.com/47aalyDqdJ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 7, 2025Foreign doctors may not be the answer
As Remix News reported just yesterday, there are serious concerns about foreign doctors in Germany, with a senior doctor speaking to Cicero Magazine describing how she would only let one out of the ten foreign doctors she supervises work independently with patients. She detailed cases of incompetence, including a possible death, and advised against a push to liberalize Germany’s medical system to accept more foreign doctors. In addition, many of the foreign doctors working in Germany lack language skills, with nearly half failing language proficiency exams.
Many native Germans struggle to gain acceptance to medical programs in the country, despite stellar academic achievement, due to competition for spots in medical universities and internships. Many of these universities are looking to accept foreign students in an effort to meet the ideal of “multiculturalism;” however, many of the best future doctors are already in the country waiting to be trained. The same situation is playing out in Britain, with extremely bright students being denied spots to study medicine due to an influx of foreigners.
Related to this issue is a previous Remix News report that covered how Europe was poaching African doctors, which is a major problem both for Africa and Europe.
In the U.K., doctors are calling for the country to stop poaching doctors from other countries and focus on training their own. Surgeon J Meirion Thomas writes:
In 2021, 63% of new registrants with the General Medical Council qualified abroad. There were 7,377 British graduates, 2,591 from European Economic Area countries and 10,009 international medical graduates, almost all from low-income countries outside Europe.
This is because successive UK governments have realized that it is cheaper to import doctors than to train our own. Medical school places in the UK are strictly limited by cost, to the detriment of thousands of aspiring students.
Between 2016 and 2021, the GMC imported 53,296 doctors from abroad, but no data has been published on their destination. Are they working in the NHS, in the private sector, not working, or have they used their GMC registration to transfer abroad? That audit must be done.
The issue has become so widespread and grave that even Scientific American called on developed countries to “stop stealing doctors from developing countries,” pointing to the U.S. as one of the main culprits.
Medical degree corruption
While many doctors and nurses in the Middle East and Africa have legitimate medical credentials, it also cannot be denied that Africa and the Middle East feature some of the most corrupt countries in the world. In turn, there has been a serious issue with medical degree corruption. This has been seen in a range of countries, including South Africa, in which students trade cash bribes for diplomas and other qualifications. The reality is that many of these schemes go largely undetected. In Liberia, officials claimed one medical school was a “diploma mill,” only for the school operator to turn around and claim the officials threatened to shut down his university if he did not pay them bribes.
In countries such as the U.K., doctors have been found to have been working for up to 19 years with fake medical degrees.
🇸🇾🇩🇪 German politicians are spreading misleading information about Syrian doctors working in Germany.
5,000 Syrian doctors may sound like a lot, but there are 420,000 doctors in Germany. The number of Syrian doctors is approximately just enough to cover the 1 million Syrian… pic.twitter.com/fHJh9945y9
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 30, 2024The practice of fake doctors carrying degrees from fake medical schools is widespread in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. While a fake degree may not be enough to gain a visa to Europe, more elaborate schemes have a far better chance of fooling European authorities.
Even in Europe, the issue of cash for medical diplomas exists, particularly in countries such as Ukraine. The country’s universities not only train Ukrainians for the medical profession, but also a wide range of foreign students who earn their degree in the country. Other nations like Romania face a medical system so corrupt that many doctors are choosing to work elsewhere, but that same corruption may follow these workers into their new host countries.
While there are many talented doctors and healthcare workers outside of Europe, the problem for these nations is that more money and a better quality of life can be had in the West. For both the fraudsters and the skilled, the West remains a major draw.
Mass migration creates conditions requiring more doctors
Another factor often overlooked is that mass migration itself creates one of the major conditions that makes it necessary to bring in more doctors and nurses from abroad. The population of France, Germany, the U.K., and just about any other European country would be falling without more immigration. Instead, all of these countries are pushing records for population growth, such as Germany, which just exceeded 84 million people.
While there is no doubt that Europe’s aging population needs more medical care, many of the migrants coming to Europe need higher rates of medical care as well. The sheer numbers of newcomers also mean that Europe’s medical staff are insufficient to treat this arriving population, placing enormous strains on the healthcare system.
As can be seen in the U.K., despite taking in tens of thousands of foreign healthcare workers, emergency rooms are still facing unprecedented overcrowding issues, leading to thousands of deaths. The real issue may not entirely be a lack of foreign healthcare workers, but also an overabundance of foreigners arriving in numbers beyond what the U.K. healthcare and social system can handle.
Although often dismissed as a xenophobic trope, the reality is also that many newcomers bring new diseases. This is not limited to Middle Easterners and Africans either. For example, Ukraine has some of the highest rates of HIV in Europe. With a mass exodus of Ukrainians, Poland, for example, has seen HIV cases jump dramatically. Once again, this places additional burdens on Western Europe’s healthcare system, which once again drives calls for more foreign healthcare workers.
There is additionally a range of unique genetic illnesses among foreign populations that medical staff must acquaint themselves with, such as sickle cell anemia, which is now a major problem in France. European populations already have their own genetic diseases to contend with, but the West’s policy of inviting the world in has invited an additional layer of complexity into the medical system.
Of course, language differences and cultural barriers lead to longer wait times as well, not to mention misunderstandings between patients and medical workers. As one article notes, “Healthcare workers in the UK are losing as much as half a working day every week overcoming language barriers. So big is the issue, that people working in UK healthcare admitted that there has been a time during their career that communicating with a patient or colleague with English as a second language has prevented, or delayed them, from giving the best care they could.
The case of a doctor eventually becoming a terrorist is going to be an extremely rare event; however, the case of al-Abdulmohsen may illustrate a far more damaging trend that may cost far more lives. The only reason any real investigation occurred was due to what was an extraordinary incident, but how many other doctors and medical professionals feature questionable backgrounds in Western countries? We may never know the answer, and that may be by design.
