LONDON: A British surgeon who burned his initials into patients’ livers during transplant operations was fined 10,000 pounds ($13,600) on Friday, and ordered to perform community service.

Simon Bramhall pleaded guilty last month to two counts of assault in a case a prosecutor called “without legal precedent in criminal law”.

Bramhall used an argon beam coagulator, which seals bleeding blood vessels with an electric beam, to mark his initials on the organs. The 53-year-old surgeon resigned from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham in 2014 after another doctor discovered what he’d done.

The hospital said there had been “no impact whatsoever” on the success of the operations.

Passing the sentence, judge Paul Farrer said Bramhall displayed “professional arrogance of such magnitude that it strayed into criminal behaviour”.

“What you did was an abuse of power and a betrayal of trust that these patients had invested in you,” the judge said.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2018