Tareq Kamleh tried to get into medical school in Dunedin, but failed after a year and left the country.
He lived at Cumberland Hall during 2003 and studied first-year health sciences at Otago, his former fellow students say.
When he failed to proceed into medicine, he returned to Australia and dropped off the radar of most of his New Zealand friends.
More than 10 years later, Kamleh has re-emerged as the blue-eyed doctor at the front of the latest Isis propaganda videos, in which he calls on foreign medics to travel to the Isis stronghold in Raqqa to help launch the Islamic State Health Service.
The video of Kamleh, who refers to himself as Abu Yusuf, showed him handling babies in a maternity ward while wearing Western-style blue surgical scrubs with a stethoscope.
Once the propaganda video went viral, people from Kamleh's past started to recognise the previously unidentified doctor.
It was revealed Kamleh, believed to be in his late 20s, went on to do his medical degree at Adelaide University, then worked as a paediatric registrar at the Adelaide Women's and Children's Hospital until 2013.
He then moved to north Queensland to work at Mackay Base Hospital, the Age reported.
He completed his final stint in the Australian medical system working in Perth until late last year.
One former Otago student told the Herald she recognised Kamleh from media reports. During her time at Otago, she knew him as "Tex".
"He was really well known in the hall, really popular, and really, really outgoing," she said.
She said she felt Kamleh had struggled to reconcile his Muslim faith with the university lifestyle.
However, another man, who stayed at Cumberland Hall with Kamleh in their first year, was surprised to hear of him joining Isis because he was not overly religious.
"He wasn't hard out about it," the man said. "He'd usually say, 'My dad makes me do this.' His family were quite religious, though."
Kamleh was part of the drinking scene, his former friends said, and dated several New Zealand women.
Lecturers contacted at Otago could not remember Kamleh, but said that given they had 2000 first-year students in each intake, that was not unusual.
One academic said that just because Kamleh did not get into medicine at Otago did not mean he wasn't good enough to be a doctor - there were strict limits on numbers for the course.
The video featuring Kamleh shows the doctor being interviewed inside the paediatric ward of a Syrian hospital.
"My name is Abu Yusuf. I made hijrah [migrated] from Australia to the Islamic State to live under the khilafah [caliphate]," he says.
Yusuf urges foreign Muslims with medical training to come forward and join the latest caliphate initiative.
"We really need your help. It is not the equipment that we are lacking, it is truly just the staff. Inshallah [if Allah wills it], see you soon."
The video is the latest in a string of high-budget propaganda films made by Isis.
- NZ Herald
