Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian paediatrician and the Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, was detained by the Israeli military on 27 December 2024 after refusing to abandon his neonatal and paediatric patients and colleagues during the Zionist siege of his facility.
He has now been held for over 17 months without charge. In late April 2026, his detention was extended again, this time indefinitely under the notorious Unlawful Combatants Law. US-based organisation Physicians for Human Rights says that Safiya is one of 375 medical personnel similarly detained. Recent reports from released detainees describe a man reduced to a state of exhaustion and semi-consciousness due to prolonged torture and starvation. Eyewitnesses report Dr Abu Safiya is suffering from extreme weakness and is frequently heard screaming during beatings. He currently faces an imminent risk of death, either from torture or due to the recent implementation of the racist death penalty for so-called terrorists.
On 14 May, a representative of Dr Abu Safiya’s family told the Quds News Network: ‘My father is living in tragic circumstances and is subjected to systematic starvation, and we live in constant anxiety and treat every call as if it were the last.’
The family appealed to the international community and global medical institutions to intervene immediately to save their father’s life and ensure his release and that of his detained colleagues. They told Quds News: ‘The family stresses that the continued detention of medical personnel under vague legal pretexts constitutes a war crime that requires prosecuting those responsible in international courts to ensure that these tragedies are not repeated.’
Health workers internationally have been calling on medical and professional organisations to support Dr Abu Safiya. In Britain campaigners are collecting signatures on an open letter to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, pointing out that the detention of a physician for ‘remaining with his patients and upholding medical neutrality’ is a violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions, and explaining that this case is ‘part of a broader, catastrophic pattern’ in which over 1,700 health workers have been killed and hundreds more detained and tortured.
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