Prisoners & Detainees
Amnesty demands Israel free Dr. Abu Safiya after 600 days without charge
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya has now spent 600 days behind bars in Israeli detention, Amnesty International USA said Wednesday, demanding that Israeli authorities "immediately and unconditionally release" the pediatrician "and all Palestinians arbitrarily detained by Israel."
The count is exact. Israeli forces seized Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, on 27 December 2024 during their raid on the hospital he refused to abandon. Wednesday, 19 August, is day six hundred.
Amnesty's statement, posted under the #FreeDrHussamAbuSafiya campaign, said recent reports show an imminent threat to his life from torture and other ill-treatment in Israeli custody, and noted he remains held without charge, separated from his family, his colleagues and the children he treated.
No indictment has ever been filed. Israel holds him under its Unlawful Combatants Law, which allows indefinite detention on six-month reviews, and on 16 June the Supreme Court rejected his release appeal, extending the detention until at least October.
The recent reports Amnesty cites are specific. A lawyer for Physicians for Human Rights Israel who reached him on 2 July found him shackled hand and foot, weak to the point of losing consciousness, with fresh bruises on his head and body after his transfer to the underground Rakevet wing, where he described daily beatings.
This is the last time you will see me. They brought me here to kill me.
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya to his lawyer, as documented by Physicians for Human Rights Israel
Released detainees have said they witnessed his torture, his family says it left him disfigured, and rights groups have demanded the Red Cross reach him and Dr. Marwan al-Hams, the Rafah field-hospital director held alongside him.
He is the third Palestinian doctor whose imprisonment this paper is tracking this week, beside Dr. Dima Barakat of Ramallah, seized Tuesday with no charge announced, and Dr. Mazen al-Rantisi, the "doctor of the poor" taken from the same neighborhood in June.
