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| Australian doctor Tareq Kamleh in the IS propaganda video. |
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: Australian jihadist doctor Tareq Kamleh morphed suddenly from a partying "playboy" doctor to a strict Muslim after a mysterious camping trip, former colleagues say.
Dr Kamleh, who up until recently was working in the health system in Perth, appeared in a propaganda video for Islamic State released this week where he spruiked its health services and asked other Muslim clinicians to join him.
But before this recent infamy, he was working as a pediatrician at a Mackay hospital in north-east Queensland and it is here that former colleagues say he underwent a seismic shift in his personality.
Known as a partying and drinking playboy who constantly cheated on his girlfriend, Dr Kamleh embraced a fundamental interpretation of the religion of his parents in a few short days in 2013, colleagues said.
"I didn't think we had too many radical fundamentalists up in Mackay."
They said Dr Kamleh stopped drinking alcohol, abstained from sex, grew his beard and withdrew from the friends he had made.
» | Tammy Mills, Patrick Hatch and Rachel Olding | Monday, April 27, 2015
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