Mackay Islamic State doctor dumped playboy ways after trip
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.
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But before this recent infamy, he was working as a pediatrician at the Mackay Base Hospital in north-east Queensland.
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.
"He went on a camping trip with some people - I don't know who they were or what they told him, but it was after that," a former hospital colleague said.
