LONDON: A British doctor who was disgruntled about his inheritance and tried to kill his mother’s boyfriend by injecting him with a fake COVID-19 vaccine that was poison was sentenced Wednesday to 31 years in prison.
Dr. Thomas Kwan disguised himself as a nurse making home virus booster visits to infect Patrick O’Hara with a flesh-eating poison because he believed the older man stood in the way of him inheriting his mother’s home some day.
“It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded,” Justice Christina Lambert said. “You were certainly obsessed by money and more particularly, the money to which you considered yourself entitled.”
Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month in Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder.
O’Hara, 72, survived after being in intensive care for several weeks and having part of his arm cut away to prevent the necrotizing fasciitis from spreading.
The ordeal left him “a shell of an individual,” he said. O’Hara and Kwan’s mother, Jenny Leung, have since split up.
Police used surveillance camera footage to track down Kwan.
They found he had hatched an elaborate plot by sending fake letters with National Health Service logos, hyperlinks and even a QR code to offer a home visit for a COVID booster to O’Hara. Kwan disguised himself in head-to-toe protective gear, tinted glasses and a surgical mask and drove a vehicle to the appointment in January using fake license plates.
Kwan, who was described as having a morbid obsession with poisons, used iodomethane, a substance found in pesticides that he thought would be difficult for medics to detect, the judge said.
Police found arsenic, liquid mercury and castor beans, which can be used to make the chemical weapon ricin, during a search of his home. He had instructions on how to make ricin on his computer.
The judge said Kwan was upset about getting a smaller share of his inheritance when his father died. He had a strained relationship with his mother, and learned that she had a provision in her will that would allow O’Hara to stay in her home if she died before him.
“Your resentment and bitterness toward your mother and Mr. O’Hara was all to do with money and your belief you were not being given money which you thought you were entitled to,” Lambert said.
O’Hara said justice had been served by the sentence.
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UK doctor gets 31 years for poisoning mother’s partner with fake COVID-19 vaccine
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UK doctor gets 31 years for poisoning mother’s partner with fake COVID-19 vaccine
- “It was an audacious plan to murder a man in plain sight and you very nearly succeeded,” Justice Christina Lambert said
- Kwan, 53, pleaded guilty last month in Newcastle Crown Court to attempted murder
North Korea’s Kim sacks vice premier, rails against ‘incompetence’
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media said Tuesday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory.
Vice Premier Yang Sung Ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.”
“Please, Comrade Vice Premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said.
“He is ineligible for an important duty,” he added.
“Put simply, it was like hitching a cart to a goat — an accidental mistake in our cadre appointment process,” the North Korean leader explained.
“After all, it is an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat.”
Nuclear-armed North Korea, which is under multiple sets of sanctions over its weapons programs, has long struggled with its moribund state-managed economy and chronic food shortages.
Kim has been quick to scold lazy officials for alleged mismanagement of economic policy but such a public dismissal is very rare.
Touring the opening of an industrial machinery complex on Monday, Kim blasted cadres who for “too long been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness.”
Yang was “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties,” Kim said, according to KCNA.
And he urged a quick turnaround in the “centuries-old backwardness of the economy and build a modernized and advanced one capable of firmly guaranteeing the future of our state.”
Images released by Pyongyang showed a stern-looking Kim delivering a speech at the venue in South Hamgyong Province in the country’s frigid northeast, with workers in attendance wearing green uniforms and matching grey hats.
- Lazy officials -
The impoverished North has long prioritized its military and banned nuclear weapons programs over providing for its people.
It is highly vulnerable to natural disasters including flood and drought due to a chronic lack of infrastructure, deforestation and decades of state mismanagement.
The new machine complex makes up part of a large machinery-manufacturing belt linking the northeast to Wonsan further south, “accounting for about 16 percent of North Korea’s total machinery output,” according to Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.
Kim’s public dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew, Yang said.
The North Korean leader is “using public accountability as a shock tactic to warn party officials,” he told AFP.
Pyongyang is gearing up for its first congress of its ruling party in five years, with analysts expecting it in the coming weeks.
Economic policy, as well as defense and military planning, are likely to be high on the agenda.
Last month, Kim vowed to root out “evil” at a major meeting of Pyongyang’s top brass.
State media did not offer specifics, though it did say the ruling party had revealed numerous recent “deviations” in discipline — a euphemism for corruption.
Vice Premier Yang Sung Ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.”
“Please, Comrade Vice Premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said.
“He is ineligible for an important duty,” he added.
“Put simply, it was like hitching a cart to a goat — an accidental mistake in our cadre appointment process,” the North Korean leader explained.
“After all, it is an ox that pulls a cart, not a goat.”
Nuclear-armed North Korea, which is under multiple sets of sanctions over its weapons programs, has long struggled with its moribund state-managed economy and chronic food shortages.
Kim has been quick to scold lazy officials for alleged mismanagement of economic policy but such a public dismissal is very rare.
Touring the opening of an industrial machinery complex on Monday, Kim blasted cadres who for “too long been accustomed to defeatism, irresponsibility and passiveness.”
Yang was “unfit to be entrusted with heavy duties,” Kim said, according to KCNA.
And he urged a quick turnaround in the “centuries-old backwardness of the economy and build a modernized and advanced one capable of firmly guaranteeing the future of our state.”
Images released by Pyongyang showed a stern-looking Kim delivering a speech at the venue in South Hamgyong Province in the country’s frigid northeast, with workers in attendance wearing green uniforms and matching grey hats.
- Lazy officials -
The impoverished North has long prioritized its military and banned nuclear weapons programs over providing for its people.
It is highly vulnerable to natural disasters including flood and drought due to a chronic lack of infrastructure, deforestation and decades of state mismanagement.
The new machine complex makes up part of a large machinery-manufacturing belt linking the northeast to Wonsan further south, “accounting for about 16 percent of North Korea’s total machinery output,” according to Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.
Kim’s public dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed in 2013 after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew, Yang said.
The North Korean leader is “using public accountability as a shock tactic to warn party officials,” he told AFP.
Pyongyang is gearing up for its first congress of its ruling party in five years, with analysts expecting it in the coming weeks.
Economic policy, as well as defense and military planning, are likely to be high on the agenda.
Last month, Kim vowed to root out “evil” at a major meeting of Pyongyang’s top brass.
State media did not offer specifics, though it did say the ruling party had revealed numerous recent “deviations” in discipline — a euphemism for corruption.
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