From gifted surgeon to bully

Dr Al-Fallouji was a surgeon at Pilgrim Hospital

Dr Mohannad Al-Fallouji was always seen as a highly-gifted surgeon.

The Iraqi-born medic was a respected author and tutor to hundreds of medical students.

But a General Medical Council (GMC) committee has struck him off after hearing how he bullied and groped staff and was insensitive towards patients.

His manner with some patients reduced them to tears and his attitude left nurses needing counselling.

Chat-up line

Dr Al-Fallouji came to England in 1979 and qualified as a surgeon two years later.

His books Clinical Radiology in Graduate Studies and Post Graduate Surgery: The Candidate's Guide appear on course guides throughout the country.

A teetotaller, he lists bee-breeding among his hobbies and among his self-proclaimed "joys" are a Japanese wife and a French lover.

Dr Al-Fallouji: Made sexual advances

He began work at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston, Lincolnshire in July 1995.

A senior ward nurse told the three-week hearing in July how the surgeon slipped his hand into her knickers and asked: "What are you doing tonight?"

Dr Al-Fallouji made sexual advances to 10 staff members at the hospital during a four-year period until 1999.

One student Joanne Heague, 24, who is now a doctor, said she froze when he asked her to spend the night at his house when his wife was away.

'Four wives'

Another student told how he bit her sexually in an operating theatre while trainee Pegah Salashouri, 25, told how he taunted her about wanting to become a surgeon.

Miss Salashouri, who was also subjected to Dr Al-Fallouji's advances, said: "He said that women are only here to pleasure men and that he would like to have four wives."

Nobody could stand up to him because he was so abrupt and rude

Dr Asim Iqbal

He also sent a flirtatious letter to a 16-year-old girl whose life he had saved.

He wrote how she "looked more charming than many Hollywood stars" and that the "time has come now not to look at you as my patient but as a lovely woman."

His manner with patients was also called abrupt and insensitive by the GMC.

He told one she was seriously ill by announcing: "Your pelvis is frozen full of cancer. You just have to live with that."

He told an overweight patient he was a "bloody nightmare" to operate on and asked another if they ate a lot of fish and chips.

One colleague, Dr Asim Iqbal, said: "He is such an arrogant person.

"Nobody could stand up to him because he was so abrupt and rude.

"He was a walking terror in a white coat."