Hussam Abu Safia, 51, was detained by the Israeli Gaza army in December.
The director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza was subject to various forms of intense torture and inhuman treatment in an Israeli military prison, his lawyer said in Tel Aviv Tribune.
Hussam Abu Safia, 51, was detained in Gaza by the Israeli army in December and taken to the Sde Teiman military detention camp in the Israel Negev desert, before being transferred to Oger prison, Located near Ramallah.
He was “arrested by force, handcuffed and forced to withdraw his clothes after being taken from hospital to one of the army camps,” said Samir Al-Mana’ama, lawyer for the center of Al Mezan for the human rights that visited him in OFER Tuesday prison.
Al-Mana’ama said Safia suffers from an “extended heart muscle and high blood pressure” and has been beaten and refused the treatment of heart disease.
Transferred to OFTER prison on January 9, he was detained in isolation for 25 days and interviewed constantly by the Israeli army, Israeli information and the police, the lawyer added.
“Although he denied all the charges against him, he was beaten with an electric stick by the Israeli army to extract a confession from him,” said the lawyer.
There was “no legal justification” for the arrest of Abu Safia, said the lawyer, adding that “any accusation needs evidence and as long as there is no evidence, there is has no real total accusation against Doctor Hussam ”.
A lack of medical care combined with appalling conditions in “very cold prison cells” had “seriously affected” the health of the doctor, he said, adding that he “faced a lot of suffering in his confinement and his detention ”.
In a separate declaration published by the lawyer, he said that Abu Safia had no access to a legal advisor during her 47 days of arbitrary detention.
Abu Safia, who had documented the cruel impact of Israel’s offensive at Kamal Adwan Hospital, was arrested after refusing multiple military threats to leave the hospital during a devastating blockade on the north of the Gaza strip.
The doctor was reportedly seen in December by two prisoners released in Sde Teiman, a controversial establishment known for his extreme abuses of prisoners.
“Thousands have disappeared”
The Nour Odeh of Tel Aviv Tribune, postponing from Amman to Jordan, said that the doctor was one of the hundreds of medical workers taken from Gaza by Israeli forces to the famous Sde Teiman detention camp and other prisons Israeli soldiers.
“At least, his family now knows where he is and that he is alive, unlike thousands of others who, according to the UN, have disappeared from Gaza,” she said.
The prisoner business committee and the prisoner company published a report citing the lawyer for a Palestinian detainee who said he had been subjected to serious tortures in Israeli detention.
According to the report, the prisoner had been beaten by Israeli soldiers when he went from north to south of Gaza, forced to remove his clothes and left for hours in the cold without food or water. Later, attached and beaten, his two hands suffering from a fracture.
Eyes bandaged and handcuffed, he was finally transferred to the hospital “because my injuries were clearly visible and swollen”, realizing only where he was after being discovered by a lawyer.
