Gaza City – Dr. Hussam Abu Safia, 52, remains in an Israeli prison a year after Israel detained him without charge or trial.
His family and supporters are demanding his release as his health deteriorates amid reports of the inhumane conditions in which he is being held.
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Abu Safia, known for his strong presence as director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, has become a central issue in international discussions on the protection of medical personnel in armed conflict.
He insisted on remaining at the hospital, along with several members of the medical staff, despite continued Israeli attacks on the facility.
Israel eventually surrounded the hospital and forced everyone to evacuate. Since then, Abu Safia has been detained and the hospital has been out of service.
He was transferred between Israeli prisons, from the famous Sde Teiman detention center to Ofer prison, where he was continually mistreated.
No charges have been brought against Abu Safia, who is being held under the “unlawful combatants” law, which allows detention without a standard criminal trial and denies detainees access to evidence against them.
The suffering of a family
Abu Safia is being held in extreme conditions and, according to his lawyers, has lost more than a third of his body weight.
His family is worried about him as he also suffers from heart problems, irregular heartbeats, high blood pressure, skin infections and lack of specialized medical care.
His eldest son, Ilyas, 27, told Al Jazeera via Zoom from Kazakhstan, where the family fled a month ago, about his grief over Abu Safia's detention, adding that his father's only “crime” was being a doctor.
Ilyas, his mother Albina and his four siblings remained with their father in Kamal Adwan during the Israeli attacks, despite opportunities to leave Gaza, especially since Albina is a Kazakh citizen.
On October 26, 2024, Israel killed Ilyas's 20-year-old brother Ibrahim while bombing the hospital.
“All the medical staff cried with grief for [my father] and for Ibrahim,” Ilyas said.
The capture of Dr. Abu Safia
In the early hours of December 27, 2024, the hospital woke up to an intense Israeli siege with tanks and quadcopter drones.
Israeli tanks had been around Kamal Adwan since mid-October 2024, gradually approaching – destroying parts of the infrastructure such as water tanks – until that day when they were so close that no one could leave.
Patients and staff gathered in the emergency reception hallway, according to Dr. Walid al-Badi, 29, who stayed with Abu Safia until his arrest and spoke to Al Jazeera on December 25 at the Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.
“The situation was extremely tense, the loudspeakers asked everyone to evacuate, but Dr. Abu Safia asked us to remain calm. Then the loudspeakers called Dr. Abu Safia to go to the tank.”
Abu Safia was ordered into an armored vehicle. According to al-Badi, the doctor returned with a sheet of instructions, disheveled, with dusty clothes and a bruise under his chin.
They all ran to check on him and he told them that he had been attacked.
“The Israeli media showed a video claiming that… they treated him with respect, but they did not show… how he was attacked in the tank, threatened,” al-Badi said.
The Israelis ordered Abu Safia to prepare a list of everyone in the hospital, which he did and returned to the armored vehicle, where he was told that only 20 staff members could remain. The rest had to leave.
“At around 10 a.m., the Israelis allowed some ambulances to take patients, wounded, some displaced civilians and the doctor's family to the Indonesian hospital. [about 1km away] while the medical teams left on foot,” says al-Badi.
However, several patients remained besieged along with doctors.
“The doctor told me to go, but I told him I would stay with him until the end.”
The only doctor left was the head of the intensive care unit, Dr Mai Barhouma, who spoke to Al Jazeera from Baptist Hospital.
Barhouma had been working with critically ill patients who depended on medical equipment and oxygen, and his conscience would not allow him to leave, even though Abu Safia asked him to.
The Israeli army repeatedly summoned Abu Safia for further instructions and, according to Drs Barhouma and al-Badi, once offered him a safe exit for himself.
He refused, insisting that he would stay with his staff. Around 10:00 p.m., the quadcopters ordered everyone to line up and evacuate.
During that time, Israel bombed and burned the upper floors and cut off the electricity.
“We were heartbroken when Dr. Abu Safia led [us] ” al-Badi recalled. “I hugged Dr. Abu Safia, who was crying when he left the hospital where he was trying so hard to stay.”
Testimonies from that day say that medical staff were taken to the al-Fakhoura school in Jabalia, where they were beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers during interrogations.
Barhouma left in an ambulance with an ICU patient, but the ambulance was held for hours at the school.
“The soldiers tied our hands and forced us to walk towards Al Fakhoura school. [2km away] from the hospital. Our colleagues who had left in the morning were still there, being tortured,” al-Badi recalled, adding that they arrived around midnight.
“They ordered us to strip down to our underwear, tied our hands and began to brutally beat us with boots and rifle butts, insulting us and verbally abusing us.”
The interrogations and beatings of the doctors in the freezing cold continued for hours while Barhouma was in the ambulance with the seriously ill patient.
“The oxygen ran out, so I started using a manual resuscitation pump. My hands swelled from pumping non-stop, terrified the patient would die,” she said.
She described hearing the screams of the male doctors being tortured and then being ordered out of the ambulance by Israeli soldiers.
“The soldier asked me for my ID and gave me an eye scan, then ordered me to leave, but I refused and told him that I had a critical patient who would die if I left them.”
Eventually, the Israelis released the doctors, including al-Badi and Abu Safia, ordering them to head to western Gaza, while sending the ambulance with Barhouma in it along an alternative route to the west.
But the relief did not last. They had only walked a few meters when an Israeli officer called out to Abu Safia.
“Our faces froze,” al-Badi said. “The doctor asked what was wrong. The officers said, 'We want you with us in Israel.'”
Al-Badi and a nurse tried to push the doctor away, but he reprimanded them and told them to keep walking.
“I cried like a child separated from its father as I watched the doctor being arrested and dressed in the white nylon uniform for detainees.”
He asks for his release
Abu Safia's family is appealing to legal and human rights bodies for his immediate release.
“My father's lawyers visited him about seven times last year, [each visit allowed only] after exhausting attempts with the prison administration. Each time, my father’s condition has deteriorated significantly,” Ilyas told Al Jazeera.
“[He] He has fractures in his thigh and shrapnel in his foot from an injury he suffered while in the hospital before his arrest. He also suffers from other health problems and is subjected to serious psychological and physical abuse that does not correspond to his age.
“Israel is trying to criminalize my father's work, his continued service to the people and his efforts to save the wounded and sick in an area that Israel itself considered a 'red zone' at the time.
“My father's presence and firmness inside the hospital posed a major obstacle to the Israeli army and its plan to empty the north of its residents.”
Ilyas is proud of his father.
“My father is a doctor who will be held up around the world as an example of adherence to medical ethics and bravery.
“I am proud beyond words and hope to hug him soon and see him emerge safely from the darkness of prison.”
