The astonishing journey of surgeon Munjed Al Muderis. He refused a decree by Saddam Hussein to amputate the ears of Iraqi draft evaders, and wound up on a rickety boat to Australia. Now Dr Munjed Al Muderis is a pioneering surgeon giving amputees the ability to walk. ![]() The junior surgeon is sitting on a toilet in the women's locker room, hunched forward, his eyes fixed firmly on the brown tiled floor. He's desperately trying to stop panic from overwhelming him by taking deep breaths, mopping his brow, clenching his eyes. If they find him here, he'll almost certainly be taken away and shot. It's been the longest five hours of his life, huddled here alone, the deathly silence punctuated only by the odd moment of sheer terror when two or more nurses enter from the adjoining operating theatre to wash up, their panicky, hushed tones betraying what they've been forced to do to the young men lying on their operating tables. Mercifully, no one notices the toilet cubicle in the corner of the change room, its indicator permanently switched to red. InformationWeek.com: News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. Plan 2: Run Yasso 800s. We learned about this amazingly useful workout in a casual conversation with Runner's World race and event promotions manager Bart Yasso, and. TheINQUIRER publishes daily news, reviews on the latest gadgets and devices, and INQdepth articles for tech buffs and hobbyists. ![]() Not so much as a whimper can be heard from the soundproof operating theatre only metres away, but the young doctor can picture what it must look like by now. A cauldron of blood. ![]() For Dr Munjed Al Muderis, this hazy day in late October 1. Baghdad's Saddam Hussein Medical Centre before the daily meeting of surgeons and registrars to discuss new admissions. While this sprawling hospital on the banks of the Tigris River was suffering terribly as a result of the draconian UN trade embargo imposed on the Saddam regime, which meant a chronic shortage of basic medicines and equipment, the staff still managed to tend to the sick and dying. Three bus loads of army deserters and draft dodgers had arrived and each was to have one of his ears partly amputated, by order of Saddam himself, he declared. A wretched, ragtag bunch, some still in their pyjamas after being dragged out of their beds, others already bloody and beaten in dirty sandals, were then frogmarched into the admissions area on level 2 and ordered to lie down on the trolleys, ready to be wheeled into the theatres. ![]() Muderis was astonished that most of the men appeared calm, perhaps from sheer relief the amputation would at least be performed under anaesthetic, rather than with the cold blade of an army knife. After the head of surgery had loudly objected to disfiguring these men, citing the Hippocratic oath, he was promptly dragged outside by a group of soldiers. Minutes later, the sound of a single gunshot pierced the air above the concrete car park. Muderis's eyes darted about, scanning the faces of the anaesthetists, doctors and surgical staff around him, all frozen in terror. Muderis knew he couldn't go through with this - doctors are trained to heal, not maim or kill - but there was no way to get past the soldiers. And so, while everyone was distracted, he had slipped into the women's locker room through an entrance behind him, shut the cubicle door, sat down on the toilet - and desperately tried to figure out what to do next. He remembers the screams of the young man's mother as he was hauled out of their house in his white underpants; the loudspeaker on top of the ruling Ba'ath Party truck imploring locals to come and witness his execution by firing squad; his father being forced to pay for the bullets that killed him. Muderis's mind then flashes back to his elite high school in Baghdad, where his fellow students had included Saddam's sons Qusay and Uday, teenage thugs who would speed about the grounds in their souped- up cars, before later graduating to rape, torture and murder on an epic scale. Then there was Saddam's nephew Omar, who would sit next to him in class, an arrogant, ignorant little prick. It's now 2pm, the daily closing time for surgery, and a group of women enter the change room for a final wash- up, their ghastly handiwork now complete. Muderis waits another 1. The hospital's corridors, crawling with soldiers only hours before, are now quiet; to avoid suspicion, Muderis resists the temptation to run to the nearest exit. Iowa Running & Triathlon Race Results 1999-2017 majority of these races on these pages scored by the timers listed at the bottom of this page; Scholastic and Collegiate. SHIPWRECKS ON THE UK - AUSTRALIA RUN. The First Fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip arrived at Botany Bay with three ships on 18-20 January 1788, and on. BBC Two prides itself on a rich mix of innovative, entertaining and challenging programmes, including documentaries, the arts, current affairs, comedy, drama and. He refused a decree by Saddam Hussein to amputate the ears of Iraqi draft evaders, and wound up on a rickety boat to Australia. Now Dr Munjed Al Muderis is a. ![]() He steps outside into the pale autumn sunlight and strides directly to the taxi rank. Muderis is now a fugitive, and not even his aristocratic pedigree - he is the only child of one of Iraq's most noble families, with a lineage dating back to the prophet Muhammad - will protect him from the Ba'ath Party's wrath. From the back of the taxi, he takes one last look back at the hospital; he's wanted to be a surgeon since he was a teenager and saw Arnold Schwarzenegger's cybernetic limbs in The Terminator. ![]() Now all his dreams seem to be turning to dust. This much is certain: he has to leave Iraq. But beyond that, he has no idea of the ordeals to come. He doesn't know that within weeks he'll be the only doctor aboard a rickety boat jammed with 1. Christmas Island, tending to three women in the late stages of pregnancy, while other passengers vomit and piss over one another from seasickness. And he certainly doesn't know that for the first time in his life he will feel like giving up, after being thrown into Curtin's punishment unit. From this modest start he will go on to become one of the country's most respected orthopaedic surgeons, one who will give Australian and British soldiers who've lost legs to improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan and Iraq the ability to walk again, pioneering a technology that enables other amputees, such as accident victims, to lead more mobile lives. Photo: Tim Bauer. But all this is still ahead of him. For now, he's enduring a clattering bus ride across a beige, desolate landscape to the Jordanian border, having secured fake papers from his cousin, an army officer with contacts in the passport office. He has $2. 2,0. 00 in cash taped to his stomach, handed to him by his mother, who tearfully farewelled him in a final clandestine meeting. Doctors are forbidden from leaving Iraq, so Munjed Al Muderis, junior surgeon, is now Munjed, handyman. But at the immigration counter in the dusty border town of Trebil, Muderis realises to his horror that one of the passport officers is a former patient - a man whose badly gashed hand he'd stitched up late one night only six weeks earlier. Get down, Mozart! Sporting a crisp white shirt, charcoal trousers and shiny black shoes, he's sitting with his back to a dress circle view of the great steel arc of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, through floor- to- ceiling sliding glass doors. But his thoughts aren't here, in the chic apartment the 4. Instead they're back in a decaying six- storey hotel in a bay suburb north of Jakarta, back in November 1. Christmas Island. Muderis had wound up in this crammed, mouldy Indonesian hotel after escaping across the Jordanian border (the passport officer, blind drunk on the night Muderis stitched him up, obligingly stamped his papers without a flicker of recognition) and a week later he was boarding a flight to Malaysia, where he hoped to find work as a doctor. But in Kuala Lumpur, Muderis met up with a people smuggler, and after another flight to Jakarta found himself paying $2. Christmas Island. Most of the hotel guests were young Iranian men who, between hiring prostitutes and going to nightclubs, betrayed toxic attitudes towards Western women, or Muslim women who adopted Western dress. One burly 2. 0- something scornfully described how he would like to dip his hands in grease and wipe it over the face and hair of a nearby woman wearing make- up and fashionable clothes - a refugee from Iraq called Doha, whom Muderis would go on to marry. Another, with a curl of his lip, labelled all uncovered women prostitutes. Then there was the little matter of the Indonesian people smugglers. ![]() One of them was driving a Jeep and his boss a new Mercedes, and there were police loitering outside the hotel, two security guys armed with automatic weapons guarding the boat they were due to leave in, and what seemed to be a naval frigate to escort them to international waters. Like any slice of humanity, the people on this boat amounted to the . I didn't see much evidence of so- called 'economic migrants'. One young Iranian couple had been arrested for cohabiting - sex outside marriage is punishable by a prison sentence - and there were a few homosexuals, who probably would have been executed if they'd stayed at home. There they were rescued by the Australian Federal Police, whom Muderis can't praise highly enough for their kindness during their five- day stay. Indeed, the detention facilities on Christmas Island were a tropical paradise compared to the hell hole of Curtin, a series of a low- slung buildings sprawling across the red dirt of the Kimberley. It was here that, upon arrival, he was issued the number 9. Surely his ordeals in Iraq and the detention centre, where he stayed for nine months, exacted a mental toll? A year later he was at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne. Out of 1. 25. 2 people who were with me in Curtin, 1. Australia. In a radio interview at the time, Muderis gave conditional support to the US- led invasion, as long as a secular government was installed and no one religious group was allowed to dominate. ![]() 38 thoughts on “ How to check if you are a victim of Ghost Click ” Pingback: 300,000 could lose their internet access as the FBI tackles cyber criminals 1 Historic Route 66 Fun Run® celebrates 90 years of Route 66 The 29th Annual Fun Run is April 29 to May 1 Kingman, AZ – Celebrate 90 years of Route 66 by joining. It was an opinion that drew the ire of zealots in Australia, who sent death threats. He feared religious extremists most of all, and had sermons in mosques taped to monitor imams preaching extremism. If you walked down a Baghdad street with a beard like that. At least Iraq would have remained secular and relatively united, and with economic stability, living standards may have improved. But the problem for Iraq is that it's caught between two religiously extreme countries: the Shiite fundamentalists of Iran and the Sunni fundamentalists of Saudi Arabia. This is a time he prefers to remember: when Baghdad was a colourful, cosmopolitan city with vibrant cafes, bars and nightclubs. Sadly, over 3. 0 years, the colour has drained from a capital now clothed in black and white, driven by joyless social restrictions and sectarian conflict. Robot Check. Enter the characters you see below. Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.
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