UK medical student ‘recruiter for IS’

A British medic recruited at least 16 fellow students from the UK to join the Islamic State group, a BBC investigation has found.

Mohammed Fakhri Al-Khabass, from Middlesbrough, was said by his university to have “played a major role” in persuading two groups of Britons to head to Syria this year.

The students were recruited in Sudan where Fakhri had studied.

They are the single largest UK group known to have joined IS militants.

Fakhri is a British Palestinian who grew up in north-east England with his two older brothers. His father worked as an NHS doctor on Teesside.

He started his medical studies at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology (UMST) in Khartoum in 2008, graduating in 2013.

By 2011 he was the President of the University’s Islamic Cultural Association (ICA) which became much more radical under his leadership.

A number of students and ex-students at UMST – speaking to the BBC on condition of anonymity – said Fakhri used his role within the ICA to spread a highly-politicised version of Islam. Ultimately, he started dissuading people from pursuing careers in the West.

UMST says Fakhri is now in Syria but one of his brothers has said he believes he is still in Sudan. His family turned down requests for an interview.

Most of the British students at UMST were the children of British-Sudanese parents who are successful UK doctors.

They had sent their children to Khartoum to study medicine because they wanted them to reconnect with their African and Islamic roots, before returning to work as doctors in Britain.