The Gaza Hospital Director Detained By Israel Was Reportedly Beaten By A Hammer And Said He Might Not Survive
Abu Safiya was severely injured, struggling to breathe and speak and almost unrecognizable.
Prominent Palestinian doctor and the director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who has been detained by Israel without charge since December 2024 and reportedly tortured in Israeli prison, has told his lawyer that he might not survive prison.
Abu Safiya has been detained by Israel on Dec. 27, 2024, after he refused to leave his patients when Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza at the time after besieging it for weeks prior, according to AP.
He has not been charged or put on trial and is being held under Israel’s Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows people to be detained without standard criminal proceedings.
Rights groups and lawyers who have visited him over the past year and a half have documented a pattern of alleged abuse, including beatings, electric shocks, prolonged solitary confinement and denial of treatment for a heart condition.
He has reportedly lost more than 40 kilograms in detention and suffered four fractured ribs.
On June 16, Israel's Supreme Court rejected Abu Safiya's appeal for release, extending his detention until at least October.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), an independent Israeli human rights organization made up of doctors and health professionals, said the reported abuse against him has intensified since he began challenging his detention in court.
His lawyer Nasser Odeh visited him on July 2 and said Abu Safiya told him that after challenging his detention in court, prison guards entered his cell and beat him with a hammer and batons.
Odeh said Abu Safiya was severely injured, struggling to breathe and speak and almost unrecognizable.
Odeh said Abu Safiya told him: "This is the last time you'll see me… they brought me here to kill me."
Israeli prison authorities denied the allegations of abuse, calling them “false and entirely without factual basis,” according to The Guardian.
Abu Safiya is one of 14 Palestinian doctors held by Israel's military for more than a year without charge, according to PHRI.
Cherry Mohamed
Isha Jain
Cherry Mohamed
