Appeals from human rights organisations for his release have failed to deter the Israelis, as they continue to operate above international law and the norms of human behaviour.
Dr HUSSAM ABU SAFIYA, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who has been incarcerated in Israeli rape and torture dungeons for over 560 days, has made an urgent plea to his lawyers, urging them to “do everything possible” to secure his release.
“Do everything possible to get me out of this place,” he told his lawyers during a recent visit, according to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI).
Dr. Abu Safiya, who is currently held at the Rakefet underground facility and is being tortured relentlessly, told his lawyers that he is being continuously beaten and held in solitary confinement.
During another visit at the underground Rakefet detention facility, he reported that he had once again been beaten by prison guards following his previous visit and has since been held alone in solitary confinement. He said his finger was injured and that he was also suffering from a problem with his right eye, yet he was not receiving adequate medical care.
The PHRI report highlighted that the doctor was not being allowed any privacy during meetings with his lawyers: “The visit took place under conditions that did not allow for confidential communication: behind an opaque partition, via telephone, while masked prison guards remained within earshot.”
The lack of privacy would certainly curtail the amount of information that Dr. Abu Safiya could share with his lawyers. His previous appeals to the Israeli justice system for release had resulted in more repressive measures by the prison authorities in apparent retribution for his efforts to secure his freedom.
During a July 2 visit, Dr. Abu Safiya’s lawyer documented severe injuries, signs of physical assault, breathing difficulties, and repeated episodes of loss of consciousness, raising fears for his life.
At the time, the doctor told his lawyer: “This is the last time you will see me… They brought me here to kill me.”
Dr. Abu Safiya ran Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, at the peak of Israel’s genocidal General’s Plan in 2024. Despite a weeks-long Israeli siege of the hospital, he kept providing medical services to a deluge of patients amid escalating Israeli savagery. He was abducted on December 27, 2024, after the Israelis forced the hospital staff to evacuate the facility.
He has remained incarcerated since then, despite never being charged. His innocence, however, has not prevented the Israelis from subjecting him to untold horrors, as his grief-stricken family fears for his fate amid ever-escalating abuses and increasingly alarming reports about his health in the Israeli dungeons.
Appeals from Palestinian and international human rights organisations for his release have failed to deter the Israelis, as they continue to operate above international law and the norms of human behaviour. They have reduced nearly all of Gaza to rubble, potentially killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, including tens of thousands of children, decimated infrastructure, poisoned water wells, destroyed schools and universities, attacked hospitals, and killed or abducted doctors as a first order of business, setting new standards of barbarism in the process.
Their enterprise of genocide, which includes slaughtering entire families daily, even during a supposed “ceasefire,” has been entirely normalised. In this new normal, Dr. Abu Safiya’s pleas have, so far, amounted to little more than those of a committed humanitarian shouting into the void while being beaten black and blue by Western-funded Israeli genocidaires running amok on his ancestral land. — Palestine Will Be Free
