Gaza City<\/strong> \u2013 Dr Hussam Abu Safia, 52, remains in an Israeli prison\u00a0a year after Israel detained him without charges or trial.<\/p>\n His family and supporters are demanding his release as his health deteriorates amid reports of the inhumane conditions under which he is being held.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Abu Safia, known for his steadfast presence as director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, north of Gaza City, has become central in international discussions on the protection of medical personnel in armed conflicts.<\/p>\n He insisted on staying at the hospital, along with several medical staff, despite continuous Israeli attacks on the facility.<\/p>\n Israel eventually surrounded the hospital and forced everyone to evacuate. Since then, Abu Safia has been in detention, and the hospital has been out of service.<\/p>\n He was transferred between Israeli prisons, from the notorious Sde Teiman holding facility to Ofer Prison, being mistreated continuously.<\/p>\n No charges have been brought against Abu Safia, who is held under the \u201cunlawful combatant\u201d law, which allows detention without a standard criminal trial and denies detainees access to the evidence against them.<\/p>\n Abu Safia is being held in extreme conditions and, according to lawyers, has lost more than a third of his body weight.<\/p>\n His family is worried about him as he also suffers from heart problems, an irregular heartbeat, high blood pressure, skin infections and a lack of specialised medical care.<\/p>\n His eldest son, Ilyas, 27, told Al Jazeera via Zoom from Kazakhstan, where the family fled a month ago, about their grief over Abu Safia\u2019s detention, adding that his father\u2019s only \u201ccrime\u201d was being a doctor.<\/p>\n Ilyas, his mother Albina and four siblings stayed with his father at Kamal Adwan through the Israeli attacks, despite opportunities to leave Gaza, especially as Albina is a Kazakh citizen.<\/p>\n On October 26, 2024, Israel killed Ilyas\u2019s brother, Ibrahim, 20, while it shelled the hospital.<\/p>\n \u201cThe entire medical staff cried in grief for [my father] and for Ibrahim,\u201d Ilyas said.<\/p>\n At dawn on December 27, 2024, the hospital woke up to a tightened Israeli siege with tanks and quadcopter drones.<\/p>\n Israeli tanks had been around Kamal Adwan since mid-October 2024, gradually moving closer \u2013 destroying parts of the infrastructure like water tanks \u2013 until that day when they were so close nobody could move outside.<\/p>\n Patients and staff gathered in the emergency reception corridor, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation was extremely tense, loudspeakers were calling on everyone to evacuate, but Dr Abu Safia asked us to remain calm. Then the loudspeakers called Dr Abu Safia to come to the tank.\u201d<\/p>\n Abu Safia was ordered to enter an armoured vehicle. According to al-Badi, the doctor returned carrying a sheet of instructions, dishevelled, his clothes dusty and a bruise under his chin.<\/p>\n Everyone rushed to check on him, and he told them that he had been assaulted.<\/p>\n \u201cIsraeli media showed a video claiming they \u2026 treated him with respect, but they didn\u2019t show \u2026 how he was assaulted in the tank, threatened,\u201d al-Badi said.<\/p>\n Abu Safia was ordered by the Israelis to prepare a list of everyone in the hospital, which he did and returned to the armoured vehicle, where he was told that only 20 staff could remain. The rest had to leave.<\/p>\n \u201cAround 10am, the Israelis allowed some ambulances to take patients, wounded people, some displaced civilians, and the doctor\u2019s family to the Indonesian Hospital [about 1km away] while the medical teams left on foot,\u201d al-Badi recounts.<\/p>\n However, several patients remained, besieged along with the medics.<\/p>\n \u201cThe doctor told me to go, but I told him I would stay with him until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n The only female medic who remained was intensive care unit head, Dr Mai Barhouma, who spoke to Al Jazeera from the Baptist Hospital.<\/p>\n Barhouma had been working with critical patients dependent on medical equipment and oxygen, and her conscience would not allow her to leave, despite Abu Safia asking her to.<\/p>\n The Israeli army repeatedly summoned Abu Safia for new instructions, once, according to Drs Barhouma and al-Badi, offering a safe exit for him alone.<\/p>\n He refused, insisting that he would stay with his staff. At about 10pm, the quadcopters ordered everyone to line up and evacuate.<\/p>\n During this time, Israel shelled and set fire to the upper floors and turned off the electricity.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were heartbroken as Dr Abu Safia led [us] out,\u201d al-Badi recalled. \u201cI hugged Dr Abu Safia, who was crying as he left the hospital he tried so hard to stay in.\u201d<\/p>\n Testimonies from that day say medical staff were taken to al-Fakhoura School in Jabalia, where they were beaten and tortured by Israeli soldiers during interrogations.<\/p>\n Barhouma left in an ambulance with an ICU patient, but the ambulance was held for hours at the school.<\/p>\n \u201cThe soldiers bound 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,\u201d al-Badi recalled, adding that they arrived at about midnight.<\/p>\n \u201cThey ordered us to strip down to our underwear, tied our hands and began severely beating us with boots and rifle butts, insulting and verbally abusing us.\u201d<\/p>\n The interrogation and beatings of the medics in the freezing cold continued for hours while Barhouma was in the ambulance with the critically ill patient.<\/p>\n \u201cThe oxygen ran out, so I started using a manual resuscitation pump. My hands swelled from pumping nonstop, terrified that the patient would die,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She described hearing the screams of the male medics being tortured, and then being ordered out of the ambulance by Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe soldier asked for my ID and took an eye scan, then ordered me to get out, but I refused and told him I had a critical patient who would die if I left them.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, the Israelis released the medics, including al-Badi and Abu Safia, ordering them to head for western Gaza, while sending the ambulance with Barhouma in it on an alternate route westwards.<\/p>\n But the relief didn\u2019t last. They had only walked a few metres when an Israeli officer called out to Abu Safia.<\/p>\n \u201cOur faces froze,\u201d al-Badi said. \u201cThe doctor asked what was wrong. The officers said: \u2018We want you with us in Israel.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Al-Badi and a nurse tried to pull the doctor away, but he rebuked them and told them to keep walking.<\/p>\n \u201cI was crying like a child being separated from his father as I watched the doctor being arrested and dressed in the white nylon uniform for detainees.\u201d<\/p>\n Abu Safia\u2019s family are appealing to human rights and legal bodies for his immediate release.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father\u2019s lawyers visited him around seven times over the past year, [each visit allowed only] after exhausting attempts with the prison administration. Each time, my father\u2019s condition has deteriorated significantly,\u201d Ilyas told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201c[He] has fractures in his thigh and shrapnel in his foot from an injury while at the hospital before his arrest. He also suffers other health problems and is subjected to severe psychological and physical abuse that does not befit his age.<\/p>\n \u201cIsrael is trying to criminalise my father\u2019s work, his continued service to people and his efforts to save the wounded and the sick in an area Israel itself considered a \u2018red zone\u2019 at the time.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father\u2019s presence and steadfastness inside the hospital posed a major obstacle to the Israeli army and its plan to empty the north of its residents.\u201d<\/p>\n Ilyas is proud of his father.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father is a doctor who will be held up worldwide as an example of adherence to medical ethics and courage.<\/p>\n \u201cI am proud beyond words, and I hope to embrace him soon and see him emerge from the darkness of prison safe and well.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaza City \u2013 Dr Hussam Abu Safia, 52, remains in an Israeli prison\u00a0a year after Israel detained him without charges or trial. His family and supporters are demanding his release as his health deteriorates amid reports of the inhumane conditions under which he is being held. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list Abu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
A family\u2019s suffering<\/h2>\n
The taking of Dr Abu Safia<\/h2>\n
![\"Doctor](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/873A9867-1766835210.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
![\"Doctor](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/873A9892-1766835880.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
Calls for his release<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/IMG_6485-copy-1766837120.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C578&quality=80\")
![\"small](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/hossam-abu-safiya-small-square-1766836346.jpg?w=591&resize=591%2C582&quality=80\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"