More than 500 days after his imprisonment in Israel, on June 10, the Israeli Supreme Court heard the appeal by Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the pediatrician and director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, for his immediate release. Seized on Dec. 27, 2024 by Israel Defense Forces in front of the hospital which they had destroyed, Dr. Abu Safiya, has been held without charges under horrific conditions in various Israeli prisons, designated a so-called “illegal combatant,” which in Israel allows people to be detained without charges for as long as authorities please.
Dr. Safiya is known worldwide for his courageous, and moral, refusal to abandon his medical post despite months of IDF attacks on the hospital. His appearance by video before the court, shackled and handcuffed, was the first time he had been seen in public since February 2025, and he looked shockingly thin, with visible signs of disease and mistreatment.
Israel’s Haaretz daily reported on June 8 that after Legal Action Worldwide had petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court for his immediate release in late May, he was transferred to another prison and placed in solitary confinement. The Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights (PHRI) protested this retribution, warning that when a PHRI lawyer had visited him last month, Dr. Safiya had already “described harsh detention conditions, medical problems that are not receiving adequate treatment and a severe shortage of food,” and now solitary confinement, “one of the harshest forms of detention,” had been added.
