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Highway scare students start internships
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- Three medical students who were stopped on a Florida highway for a highly publicized, 17-hour terror investigation, have begun an internship in Miami, a Muslim activist from Florida said Sunday. Ayman Gheith, 27, Kambiz Butt, 25, and Omer Choudhary, 23, were driving September 13 to Miami, where they were to begin their internship at Larkin Community Hospital, when they were stopped on Interstate 75 by police.
Florida authorities had been told to be on the lookout for the men, who were traveling in two cars, after a woman reported she heard them make suspicious comments at a restaurant in north Georgia. The men were cleared and released after 17 hours on the side of the road, but the hospital, citing "threatening, ethnic, racial e-mails directed at Muslim-Americans," decided to turn the students away. "We felt that the students' medical education would be adversely compromised due to the current national attention," Larkin Community Hospital President Dr. Jack Michel said at the time. In a September 16 conference call with the students and their school, Ross University, the students said they agreed with the decision. "They are aware of our concerns, and they share them, and they feel that this is not the best time to, today or tomorrow, start a rotation at the hospital," Michel told reporters. "That does not mean that they're not welcome here. That only means that for now, we feel -- and they agree -- that this is not a good time to start rotation at Larkin Hospital." Altaf Ali, director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the students and Michel reached an agreement Thursday to let the students finish their educations. "Basically, what was agreed upon is that he was going to allow the students to complete their clinical in the surrounding clinics around the hospital," Ali said. "But he did not want to specify which clinics." Michel said the rotation for second-year students does not require students work in a hospital setting, and that they will fulfill their requirements by working in clinics and doctors offices and attending classes. Neither Larkin nor the hospital had an immediate comment. Ali said the men have started already. "They're doing great," Ali said. "It's only a six-week clinical. Basically they are very happy to get it out of the way so they can get on with their curriculum." The men -- all three U.S. citizens who attend Ross University Medical School on the Caribbean island of Dominica -- denied making any inappropriate comments at the north Georgia restaurant.
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