Sana’a: Police in Yemen have arrested an unidentified man for posing as a French doctor for 15 years in a small area in the southern province of Taiz.
Mustafa Mohammad Ganem, a security official who raided the man’s clinic in the Taiz Al Judairi region, told Gulf News that residents tipped off the police after growing suspicious of the man’s practices.
“The man was in Djibouti a long time ago where he learnt French,” the official said.
Working under the alias Richard Francois, the man in his late 50s, hid his true identity by dying his hair as well as speaking fluent French and broken Arabic.
“The man is originally from Yemen. He has false certificates and stamps of French hospitals,” Ganem said.
The man treated numerous people but according to the police official no one died due to his actions.
“He used to overcharge people hundreds of dollars pretending that he used the money to send samples to as far afield as France. He uses the stamps to show that the samples landed in France,” Ganem said.
Most of the man’s patients usually found their symptoms eased after taking his medicine.
“He mixed tranquillising drugs with juice which calmed his patients,” Ganem said.
Despite learning of the man’s true identify, Ganem said that many showed sympathy for him and proposed paying money to secure his release.
“Some people approached me and proposed paying 300,000 riyals [Dh5,123] to release him.”
