Gaza doctor dying in Israeli cell after 18 months with no charge
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, who ran Gaza's last functioning hospital in the north, is close to death in Israeli custody, his lawyer says.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the paediatrician who ran Gaza’s last functioning hospital in the north, is close to death in an Israeli cell after 18 months held without charge, his lawyer says.
Naji Abbas of Physicians for Human Rights Israel said on Saturday that Abu Safiya is in “immediate life-threatening danger”. His lawyer, Nasser Odeh, visited him in the Rakefet wing of Nitzan Prison and found him struggling to breathe, unable to sit upright without falling, and afraid to speak freely. Abu Safiya told him: “This is the last time you will see me. They brought me here to kill me.”
Abu Safiya, 52, was Kamal Adwan Hospital’s director when Israeli forces stormed it on 27 December 2024 and detained him along with medical staff and patients. He had refused to evacuate while patients remained. His 15-year-old son, Ibrahim, had already been killed by an Israeli drone strike at the hospital gate two months earlier.
He has never been charged. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on 16 June that his detention could continue until at least October under the Unlawful Combatants Law, a statute that lets prosecutors hold someone indefinitely without ever filing an indictment. He has spent much of the past month in solitary confinement, which his lawyer says was retaliation for appealing.
Two men released from the same prison, Ahmad Qaddas and Rami Abu Amira, told Mondoweiss they saw him weighing no more than 40 kilograms, with soldiers standing on his chest and forcing him to insult himself. Qaddas said: “If there isn’t an urgent intervention to save Dr Hussam, he will die inside the prison.” His lawyer has documented four fractured ribs, skin infections, and the withholding of his blood-pressure medication. UN experts demanded his release in March, citing reports of severe torture.
An allegation, not a charge
Israeli outlets have described Abu Safiya as a Hamas military medical officer, pointing to old photographs of him in uniform. No court has tested that claim, and none has been asked to: the Unlawful Combatants Law exists precisely so the state never has to. MedGlobal, the US charity he also worked for, and his hospital colleagues deny it. Whatever his affiliation, it does not license torture or medical neglect of an untried man.
He is not an isolated case. Health Workers Watch counts 115 Gaza medical workers still in Israeli detention. Dr Adnan al-Bursh, head of orthopaedics at al-Shifa Hospital, died in Ofer Prison in April 2024 after reported torture. Abu Safiya’s lawyer is warning, in the plainest terms available to him, that his client will be next.
