Gaza Genocide07 July, 20263 min read
Israeli Guards Beat Gaza Doctor Hussam Abu Safiya in Rakefet Interrogation Facility
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Gaza hospital director Hussam Abu Safiya held in Israel for about 18 months without charge. Severe beating by Israeli guards left him with life-threatening injuries.
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Detention and alleged abuse
Lawyer Nasser Odeh said he visited detained Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya last Thursday and struggled to recognise him because of injuries he described as severe, saying Abu Safiya “nearly lost consciousness several times.” Odeh told the BBC that Abu Safiya said he was subjected to severe violence inside Israel’s Rakefet interrogation facility, and that more than five prison guards assaulted him with their hands, batons and hammers after an appeal against his detention was heard last month at Israel’s Supreme Court in Jerusalem.
The Middle East Monitor report says Abu Safiya has been detained by Israel since 27 December, 2024, when Israeli forces raided Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, and that the hospital continued to function during a near-total siege treating patients despite severe shortages of fuel, medicine and staff. Al Jazeera reported that the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory called for Israel to immediately release Abu Safia, a 52-year-old director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, saying there are credible reports he has faced “continued and severe abuse.”
UN calls for release
Al Jazeera quoted the UN commission’s statement calling for “the immediate, unconditional and safe release of Dr. Abu Safiya and of all medical personnel held in arbitrary detention by Israel,” and said it also urged Israeli authorities to provide immediate independent medical care.
The same report said a Reuters news agency quote of an Israel Prison Service (IPS) spokesperson rejected the inquiry commission’s claims as “false, outrageous, and entirely without factual basis.”
The Guardian reported that Abu Safiya met his lawyer Nasser Odeh on 2 July after a transfer to the underground Rakefet prison in late June, and that Odeh said Abu Safiya had difficulty breathing and speaking continuously and repeatedly seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.
In a joint statement with Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI), the Guardian said Abu Safiya told his lawyer: “They brought me here to kill me. I don’t see myself surviving. This is the end,” as rights groups called for his release.
Court orders response
Haaretz reported that Israel's Supreme Court on Sunday ordered the state to respond by Tuesday to allegations concerning the imprisonment and condition of detained Gaza hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, after Physicians for Human Rights–Israel said new information indicated he was in immediate, life-threatening danger.
The Guardian said Abu Safiya’s detention has lasted for 18 months without charge or trial and described his condition as “tangible danger to his life” after being held indefinitely along with thousands of other Palestinian civilians in prisons Israeli rights groups say have become torture camps.
The National reported that Physicians for Human Rights warned Abu Safiya faced an immediate threat to his life in Israeli prison, and that lawyer Nasser Odeh called for an urgent judicial visit “before it is too late.”
Middle East Eye quoted Abu Safiya’s son Elias saying, “We have been abandoned, and Palestinians like my father are being abandoned in Israeli prison cells and left to die,” while describing Abu Safiya’s deterioration after his lawyer visited him on 2 July at the underground Rakefet interrogation facility in Nitzan Prison, northern Israel.