A group of trainee female doctors from Afghanistan have travelled to Edinburgh to complete their medical degrees after the Taliban forced them to quit studying. The 19 women arrived in the UK on Tuesday after a three-year campaign by the parents of , the kidnapped Scottish charity worker who was killed during a botched rescue attempt by US special forces in 2010. The Linda Norgrove Foundation, set up and run by her parents, John and Lorna, from their home in Uig, in the Western Isles, said the students had in effect been confined to their homes in fear for their lives since the Taliban regained power.
The foundation worked with UK and Scottish government officials to arrange safe passage and student visas for the women. They have been given places at four medical schools after Scottish ministers changed the law to treat them as home students eligible for free tuition. It said significant effort had gone into negotiating legal and bureaucratic hurdles to bring them to the UK, including organising English language tests and arranging university interviews via Skype.
It then negotiated their travel to Pakistan to apply for UK visas, Pakistani visas, biometrics, student funding, UK bank accounts and student accommodation. All told, it spent about £60,000. Many of the women were based in Kabul, but others came from remote provinces, including Bamyan, Wardak and Daykundi.
They flew to the UK from Islamabad in Pakistan. In a statement issued by the foundation, one of the students, .