Dr Hussam Abu Safiya

Fears Grow for Gaza Doctor as Abuse in Israeli Detention Escalates

A Palestinian man walks past a portrait of Safiya painted on the rubble of the Italian Tower, which was destroyed in Israeli attacks in Gaza City, on 27 June.Photo credit: Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arin

Dr Hussam Abu Safiya’s life is in imminent danger, as after 18 months, he remains imprisoned by the Israeli occupation, his lawyer and several organisations warned recently. The paediatrician’s attorney, Nasser Odeh, reported that during a visit to Dr Abu Safiya on 2 July, he saw visible marks of beatings and torture. Dr Abu Safiya’s family and health activists have thus renewed appeals to international bodies and Israeli courts for the physician’s urgent release, alongside other doctors illegally detained by Israel.

This alarm follows a court hearing in June, where Dr Abu Safiya was seen publicly for the first time in a year. Since then, he has apparently been transferred to the notorious underground Rakefet prison facility, where he described intensified abuse. “This is the last time you’ll see me,” Dr Abu Safiya told Odeh. “They brought me here to kill me.”

“Dr Abu Safiya’s transfer to the ‘Rakefet’ section—associated with numerous testimonies of severe torture, abuse, humiliation, starvation, solitary confinement, and denial of medical treatment—marks an extremely dangerous escalation in the campaign against him,” the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society remarked.

“According to Dr Abu Safiya, after a hearing in his appeal at the Israeli Supreme Court, four to five officers entered his cell and beat him across his body with a hammer and batons,” the organisation Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) stated. PHRI added that bruising across his body, including his head and neck, was so severe that Odeh initially struggled to recognise him. “During the meeting, Dr Abu Safiya had difficulty breathing and speaking, appeared extremely weak, and struggled to remain seated without falling,” the organisation emphasised.

This episode has heightened fears for the physician’s safety. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor warned that Dr Abu Safiya “may be killed in Israeli detention facilities, either under torture or as a result of the deliberate denial of treatment.”