Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, Abducted by Israel in 2024, Renews Demand for 'Immediate Release'

Showing signs of the "severe torture" he has allegedly endured at the hands of his Israeli captors over 530 days of detention without charge, Palestinian physician and Gaza hospital director Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya appeared remotely before the Israel's Supreme Court on Wednesday to demand his freedom.

“My detention is unjust and arbitrary, and I demand my immediate release,” Abu Safia—who appeared to have lost considerable weight—told the court through his defense attorney, Nasser Abu Odeh. “I am a pediatrician who provides medical services and care to patients, the wounded and vulnerable people in the Gaza Strip.”

Abu Safiya's son, Ilyas Abu Safiya, spoke with Al Jazeera after the hearing, telling the Qatar-owned network, “When we saw his latest image, we received it with shock, with tears, and with weeping."

“We did not only see the face of a father we have missed for many long months, we saw the marks of torture, pain, and exhaustion clearly etched on his face."

Abu Safiya lost his mother to a fatal heart attack during his imprisonment, and his 15-year-old son Ibrahim Hussam Idris Abu Safiya was killed in an October 2024 drone strike.

Israeli troops detained Abu Safiya—now 52 years old—on December 28, 2024 amid a prolonged siege and assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where he served as director. Abu Safiya defied an Israeli forced displacement order and refused to evacuate the facility as long as patients were still being treated.

Israel accuses Abu Safiya of being affiliated with Hamas, whose armed wing led the October 7, 2023 attack, and whose political division governs Gaza. Specifically, Israel claims the doctor is an officer in Hamas' Military Medical Services.

However, Israel has produced no verifiable evidence supporting its claims.

Former inmates at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison in southern Israel's Negev Desert said they saw Abu Safiya there. According to testimonies gathered by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, the physician was tortured before his arrival at Sde Teiman and inside the prison.

Abu Safiya was subsequently transferred to Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank, where another renowned Gaza physician, Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, died after reportedly enduring torture. United Nationsa Palestine expert Francesca Albanese cited reports that al-Bursh was “likely raped to death."

Israeli courts have repeatedly extended Abu Safiya's detention, most recently in late April. Last week, the advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) said that Abu Safiya was moved to solitary confinement in Nafha Prison, also in the Negev, reportedly in retaliation for appealing his imprisonment.

“Dr. Hussam remains in solitary confinement in Nafha Prison. He appeared in court via screen, handcuffed and shackled; the court refused to remove the shackles,” Abu Odeh told Al Jazeera on Thursday.

"He has not received medical treatment or the medications he requires for his chronic illness," the attorney said of his client. "He continues to suffer from severe back and neck pain following an assault, and is experiencing vision problems after his glasses were confiscated and have not yet been returned.”

PHRI has repeatedly demanded the release not only of Abu Safiya but of more than a dozen other Palestinian doctors and hundreds of medical professionals jailed by Israel.

"Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, Israel has arrested hundreds of essential medical workers, effectively paralyzing an already fragile healthcare system under constant destruction," the group recently said. "These arrests have removed critical, highly trained individuals from their roles at a time when their expertise is most urgently needed. Dozens of these medical workers remain detained without due process as of today, many held for prolonged periods."

PHRI "calls for the immediate cancellation of these detention orders and urges both national and international actors to take action in solidarity, enabling these physicians to return home and resume their lifesaving duties."

A UN commission concluded in 2024 that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza" that has left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing. The UN experts further accused Israel of "committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”