A fake doctor who left a young boy ‘screaming in agony’ as he tried to force an unauthorised medical device onto the child’s penis has been jailed. Mohammed Alazawi, 54, was convicted of 40 offences after a trial at Southwark Crown Court, which heard how he posed as an experienced doctor to carry out more than 500 cut-price circumcisions for hard up Muslim families from London to Birmingham.
Five days into his trial, he tried to flee the country, but was caught boarding a ferry from Holyhead to Dublin with thousands of pounds in cash. In one particularly shocking incident, the father of a four-year-old boy described how his child was left with bruising and serious pain as Alazawi attempted to use a plastibell ring purchased from Alibaba that was too small for the boy’s penis.
The plastibell method involves cutting vertically down the foreskin, fitting a ring around the head of the penis, pulling the foreskin back over and tying it down to the ring. This cuts off the blood supply, causing tissue death and the removal of the foreskin after around a week.
Alazawi, of Hampton Road in Ilford, East London, was allowed to operate because non-therapeutic male circumcision is unregulated and is not required to be carried out by a medical practitioner. After his conviction, Judge Gregory Perrins said the law around circumcisions should be changed, echoing remarks made by Judge Noel Lucas KC who said regulation was ‘long overdue’ during another sentencing for similar offences at another London court earlier this year.
Jailing him for nine years, Judge Perrins said Alazawi carried out a ‘deliberate deception that went on for years’, calling it an ‘especially grave crime’ that saw parents ‘taken in by lies’. “The deception makes your offending significantly more serious than it would otherwise have been if I was dealing with these assault counts directly,” added the judge.
Commenting on Alazawi’s claims about his religious motivations, Judge Perrins said: “While I accept there was a religious aspect to your practice, that has little effect on culpability because your faith does not direct you to carry these out like you did. That was your choice.”
The convictions and sentence, which included victims from Canada and Birmingham, are:
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Seven counts of wounding with intent – four years
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One count of actual bodily harm – two years
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Six counts of fraud by false representation – three-and-a-half years
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15 counts of parenteral administration of a prescribed medicine – 18 months
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Five counts of supplying a pharmaceutical medicine – 12 months
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Six counts of supplying prescription only medication – 16 months
‘Fraud on the community’
Born in Iraq in 1971, Alazawi moved to the UK in 1997. Here the dad-of-nine was convicted for ‘persistently soliciting for prostitution’ and served time for a ‘violent attack on a lone woman’. Despite his criminal history, Alazawi presented himself as a respectable figure to London’s Islamic community, posing as a doctor and surgeon with 12 years experience in the NHS on Facebook and on thousands of leaflets that he distributed around mosques.
Charging £150 in cash, Alazawi undercut professional clinics who were said by barristers to cost between £160 to £300. Prosecutor Ben Douglas-Jones KC said Alazawi’s approach was a ‘fraud on the community’ that ‘preyed’ on poorer families by offering them more affordable prices without the proper safeguarding measures used by his competitors.
Alazawi ‘prioritised profit and speed over patient safety’, argued the prosecutor, continuing his unsafe practices while on bail after his first arrest in 2018, restocking his medicines a day after his release so he could carry on offending until his second arrest in 2022.
The court heard how Alazawi would arrive at the home of patients along with a much younger assistant, who, with the help of a parent, would restrain the child on a table. The trial heard Alazawi would use a pre-filled concoction of anaesthetics, which the crown said he administered without aspirating the syringe, risking toxic poisoning in the patient.
As well as lying about his credentials, Alazawi would carry the business card of a legitimate doctor to signal his association with a real practitioner to prospective customers. He would also leave a handwritten note, claiming to be a doctor, in the window of his car, to avoid parking charges while carrying out procedures.
The unsafe and unsanitary practices heard in court included:
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Risk of undue pain or an overdose due to a failure to properly dose anaesthetic, through rigorous measurement of drugs and enquiry about patient weight.
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Use of unsterile equipment through the pre-filling of anaesthetic syringes and failure to segregate sterile and unsterile equipment while stored in a suitcase.
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Failure to monitor patients or make records of treatment.
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The absence of a paediatric nurse, resuscitation equipment, or emergency medicine.
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Use of unauthorised plastibell circumcision devices purchased from Alibaba.
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Prescription of powerful antibiotics without checking for allergies.
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Failure to examine the ‘red book’ (health record) of child patients.
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Use of plastibell method on a child that was ‘way too old’.
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Minimal sanitation with infrequent handwashing, not wearing a disinfected gown, and failing to disinfect surfaces.
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Failure to explain the procedure to parents and gain informed consent.
Describing a shocking incident with a four-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, Mr Douglas-Jones said Alazawi attempted to fit a plastibell ring that was much too small for the child’s penis at the boy’s home in Kent, and then transported the boy to his own home in East London and tried it again.
The attempted circumcision with the wrong method left the boy’s penis bruised, while his father told jurors he remembered him ‘screaming in agony’ and suffering during urination for weeks after. Judge Perrins said the child was ‘obviously in pain’ and that harm was caused by Alazawi’s ‘poor standard of professionalism and care’.
‘Blatant disregard for safety’
Defence team Paul Jackson and Emily Mattin argued Alazawi was able to carry out hundreds of procedures without causing serious harm, highlighting numerous cases where parents had approached him and made no complaint about the procedure or outcome.
Mr Jackson also suggested more than £14,790 seized from Alazawi’s cupboard was, by his account, winnings from a community lottery, and not the profits of his circumcision business.
West Midlands Police previously explained how officers in Birmingham were alerted after a young victim presented with an infection as a result of Alawazi’s operation. Detective Inspector Neil Hunt said his actions ‘amounted to wounding’.
Anja Hohmeyer of the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Alazawi pretended to be a medical practitioner to unsuspecting families and carried out circumcisions in unsafe, unsanitary and harmful ways, demonstrating a blatant disregard for the safety of his young patients and the impact of his actions on his victims, their families, and communities. We hope that this conviction offers them some comfort in seeing Alazawi being brought to justice.”
Alazawi initially claimed he had performed thousands of operations, but this was reduced to 550 during the trial. The prosecution say this lower estimate equates to £82,000 in cash. Police believe there may be many more victims yet to come forward.
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