The Guardian reports in: “Detained Gaza doctor almost unrecognisable after injuries in Israeli jail, lawyer says” that: “Hussam Abu Safiya faces ‘tangible danger to his life’ following 18 months in prison without charge or trial.”
Reuters reports: “A U.N. human rights body on Monday called Israel’s detention of Gazan doctor Hussam Abu Safiya arbitrary and urged his immediate release, as rights groups and his lawyer warned that his life was in imminent danger. … Last month, Israel’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal to release him.”
See from the noted Norwegian doctor and author Mads Gilbert: “Release Dr Hussam Abu Safia immediately! It’s been more than 1,000 days of genocide and 500 days of Abu Safia’s detention. We need urgent action to end both,” which notes: “Abu Safia, a Palestinian pediatrician and hospital director, first captured the global spotlight on December 27, 2024. That day footage surfaced of him wearing a white doctor’s coat and walking through the bombed-out rubble of what was once a northern Gaza street towards an armoured vehicle where Israeli soldiers were waiting for him.”
FEROZE SIDHWA, [email protected], @FerozeSidhwa
Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza. He is featured in the new documentary “American Doctor” See his articles and interviewshe has given, including “65 Doctors, Nurses and Paramedics: What We Saw in Gaza” published by the New York Times.
Sidhwa said today: “Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has been in Israeli custody, without charges, since late December 2024. During that time he has been tortured and even starved. He has lost much of his bodyweight. His lawyer reports that he has been beaten so badly over the past several days and weeks that he did not recognize Dr. Abu Safiya the last time they met. He is being held in the Rakefet section of Nitzan Prison, which was shut down for notorious human rights abuses in the 1980s but was reopened by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the Israeli Prison System and whom the leader of the political opposition in Israel, Yair Lapid, describes as a ‘dangerous Jewish fascist.’ He is also the current frontrunner to be the next prime minister of Israel. Dr. Abu Safiya told his lawyer that he believes the Israelis are simply waiting for him to die slowly of torture, neglect, and starvation, and he is certainly correct. This is happening in full view of the leaders of the United States, Europe, the U.N., the American Medical Association, and they are all consciously choosing not to do anything about it.” He highlights a petition currently circulating among Western and (a very few) Israeli healthcare workers calling for Abu Safiya’s protection.