The 51-year-old Hussam Abu Safia was detained by the Israeli army from Gaza in December.
The director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to various forms of intense torture and inhumane treatment in an Israeli military prison, his lawyer told Al Jazeera.
The 51-year-old Hussam Abu Safia was detained by the Israeli army from Gaza in December.
He was “arrested by force, handcuffed and forced to take off his clothes after being taken from the hospital to one of the army camps”, said Samir al-Mana’ama, a lawyer with the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights who visited him in Ofer Prison.
Al-Mana’ama said that Abu Safia suffers from “an enlarged heart muscle and from high blood pressure” and was beaten up and refused treatment for the heart condition.
He was held in solitary confinement for 25 days at another prison where he was interrogated nonstop by the Israeli army, Israeli intelligence and police, the lawyer added.
“Despite denying all the charges against him, he was beaten with an electric stick by the Israeli army so as to extract a confession from him,” said the lawyer.
There was “no legal justification” for Abu Safia’s arrest, the lawyer said, adding that “any accusation needs evidence and as long as there is no evidence, there is no real complete accusation against Doctor Hussam.”
A lack of medical care combined with the appalling conditions in “very cold prison cells” had “severely affected” the doctor’s health, he said, adding that he was “facing a lot of sufferings in his confinement and detention”.
In a separate statement issued by the lawyer, he said that Abu Safia had been given no access to legal counsel during his 47 days in arbitrary detention.
Abu Safia, who had documented the cruel impact of Israel’s offensive on Kamal Adwan Hospital, was arrested after refusing multiple military threats to leave the hospital during a devastating blockade on the northern Gaza Strip.
The doctor was also reportedly sighted back in December by two released prisoners at the Sde Teiman base in Israel’s Negev Desert, a controversial facility known for its extreme abuse of detainees.
‘Thousands disappeared’
Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh, reporting from Amman in Jordan, said the doctor was one of hundreds of medical workers taken from Gaza by Israeli forces to the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and other Israeli military prisons.
“At least his family now knows where he is and that he is alive, unlike potentially thousands of others who the UN said have been forcibly disappeared from Gaza,” she said.
The Prisoners’ Affairs Committee and the Prisoner’s Society issued a report citing the lawyer of a Palestinian detainee who said he had been subjected to severe torture in Israeli detention.
According to the report, the prisoner had been beaten by Israeli soldiers while going from north to the south of Gaza, forced to take off his clothes and left for hours in the cold without food or water. Later, tied up and beaten, with both his hands suffering a fracture.
Blindfolded and handcuffed, he was eventually transferred to hospital “because my injuries were clearly visible and swollen”, only realising where he was after being discovered by a lawyer.