NEW GLASGOW, N.S. – A Nova Scotia physician charged with voyeurism after medical clinic staff were surreptitiously filmed in the washroom has approval to practice again.

Dr. Rafid al-Nassar, a 41-year-old former Iraqi refugee, was arrested last fall after New Glasgow Regional Police received a complaint from staff at the Westside Medical Centre.

In a notice Thursday, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia lifted its interim suspension against al-Nassar, but said he is required “to have a chaperone present for all patient encounters, except … in the operating room.”

The college said signs noting the chaperone requirement must be placed where patients are seen.

Al-Nassar, who graduated from the University of Al-Mustansiriyah College of Medicine in Baghdad in 1998 and practised for a time in Ontario, still faces a criminal trial.

A 2008 story in the Toronto Star said al-Nassar and his family left Iraq after his wife was almost kidnapped in Baghdad in 2005.

Police said staff members complained after a camera was found in the staff washroom.