Palestinian Territory – The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) should urgently coordinate with Israeli authorities to secure immediate access to two Palestinian doctors: Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in North Gaza, and Marwan Al-Hams, director of field hospitals in the Gaza Strip.
Given the growing fears that they could face death from torture in Israeli prisons and interrogation centres, the Red Cross must intervene immediately and conduct visits, especially considering credible reports of their health seriously declining due to severe torture, which includes repeated beatings and the withholding of medical treatment.
The immediate release of Abu Safiya and Al-Hams, who are civilian doctors with protected status under international humanitarian law, is a top legal obligation that must be fulfilled and cannot be overlooked. Allowing the Red Cross to visit them right away is not a replacement for their release, but a necessary step to prevent their death in custody from torture.
The immediate release of Abu Safiya and Al-Hams, who are civilian doctors with protected status under international humanitarian law, is a top legal obligation that must be fulfilled and cannot be overlooked
Israel bears full responsibility for their safety, lives, and fate. At the same time, the international community must act swiftly and exert effective pressure to ensure their release and protection.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor expresses deep concern over lawyer Nasser Odeh's account regarding a serious threat to Dr Hussam Abu Safiya's life. This information was gathered during a legal visit to an underground interrogation facility at Nitzan Prison. He disclosed a significant decline in Abu Safiya's physical and mental health, along with strong signs of torture and repeated physical abuse, warning that he could be killed under torture if there is no urgent action.
Odeh, Abu Safiya's legal representative who visited him on 2 July at Nitzan's underground facility, Rakefet, reported that his client was brought to the meeting shackled by hands and feet and under heavy guard. He had recent, severe injuries to his head, eyes, ears, and neck, to the point that he was unrecognisable at first glance. Odeh explained that Abu Safiya appeared extremely weak and exhausted, unable to sit upright, with noticeable difficulty breathing and speaking. He also showed multiple signs of unconsciousness, along with intense fear and distress, hesitating to speak freely due to fear of further torture and reprisals.
During the lawyer's visit, Abu Safiya explained to Odeh that he was violently assaulted after an appeal hearing before the Israeli Supreme Court on 10 June. While in solitary confinement at Ganot Prison, several guards stormed his cell and attacked him with a hammer and batons, leaving injuries all over his body. He also reported that since his transfer to the Rakefet facility on 24 June, he has faced repeated assaults. These attacks have caused him to lose consciousness multiple times, yet he has not received any medical examination or treatment appropriate for his injuries.
Based on Abu Safiya's account and the lawyer's direct observations of his visible injuries, as well as the serious decline in his ability to breathe, speak, and sit upright, the lawyer determined that his client's life in detention is at immediate and serious risk.
Abu Safiya made his first public appearance in over a year during a court session, appearing via video link from his cell. He was shackled at the hands and feet, with visible bruises and injuries on his face and arms, consistent with torture and ill-treatment reported by his lawyer in Israeli prisons and interrogation centres.
On 3 June, the Israeli prison authorities moved Abu Safiya from Ktzi'ot Prison to solitary confinement at Nafha desert prison in southern Israel. This punitive action followed his defence team's appeal to the Supreme Court, which challenged his ongoing arbitrary detention. The move led to a significant decline in his detention conditions and negatively impacted his physical and mental health.
The available information about Abu Safiya's condition raises grave fears that he may be killed in Israeli detention facilities, either under torture or as a result of the deliberate denial of treatment. These concerns are further heightened by escalating official incitement against Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and by the Israeli political and legislative climate, which expands the scope of violence against them and grants it public cover, including the advancement of draft laws permitting the execution of Palestinian prisoners. This places Abu Safiya's life, alongside those of other Palestinian detainees, at real and imminent risk, requiring urgent international intervention.
Abu Safiya's role as a key symbol of medical and humanitarian resilience in northern Gaza was demonstrated by his decision to stay at Kamal Adwan Hospital despite the siege, raids, and collapse of the health system, and his refusal to leave his patients until his arrest. This has put him at serious risk of reprisal within Israeli detention facilities.
Euro-Med Monitor shares the grave concerns of Abu Safiya's family and various rights groups that his imprisonment and targeting are a form of punishment for his resilience and humanitarian work, especially considering the torture, isolation, and denial of medical treatment he faces.
Hussam Abu Safiya, whom Israeli forces arrested on 27 December 2024 after storming Kamal Adwan Hospital and rendering it out of service, remains detained without charge or trial under Israel's "Unlawful Combatants Law."
His detention is arbitrary and lacks a legitimate legal foundation, especially since it is based on an exceptional law and classified accusations and evidence that neither Abu Safiya nor his lawyers can access or challenge. This reduces the right to defence and judicial review to mere formalities and prolongs an indefinite deprivation of liberty without ensuring a fair trial. Since his arrest, Abu Safiya has endured torture and ill-treatment, resulting in fractured ribs, severe weight loss, and damaged eyesight. His ongoing detention, marked by isolation and denial of adequate healthcare, demands his immediate release and guarantees of protection from further torture and ill-treatment.
Similarly, Euro-Med Monitor has received credible reports that Dr Marwan Al-Hams is enduring repeated torture and abuse at an Israeli interrogation centre. His health is deteriorating significantly, including a severe heart attack, prompting serious concerns for his life.
On 21 July 2025, Al-Hams was kidnapped in the Al-Mawasi area of Rafah by an armed group dressed in civilian clothes. They opened fire, wounding him in the leg, and caused the death of photojournalist Tamer Al-Zaanin. Two others were injured: one a journalist and the other a Ministry of Health employee. It was later revealed that Al-Hams was held at an Israeli interrogation centre.
The manner in which Al-Hams was abducted, followed by his continued detention in an Israeli interrogation centre without a clear legal basis being declared or basic defence guarantees being provided, including informing him of the reasons for his detention, enabling genuine contact with his lawyer, and subjecting his case to effective judicial review, strips his detention of legal legitimacy and renders it arbitrary.
Withholding detailed information about his legal status, detention conditions, and health, as well as denying him proper communication with his lawyer and family, increases the risk to his life and safety, especially considering reports of his worsening health and exposure to torture.
Both Hussam Abu Safiya and Marwan Al-Hams are subjected to a consistent pattern of targeting Palestinian medical personnel in Gaza. This includes killings, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, ill-treatment, and denial of medical care.
This pattern has affected doctors detained by Israeli forces from Gaza's hospitals or while they were carrying out medical duties. Among those affected are Adnan Al-Bursh, head of orthopaedics at Al-Shifa Hospital, who was killed under torture in Ofer Prison in April 2024, and Iyad Al-Rantisi, head of obstetrics at Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was also killed under torture at an Israeli security interrogation centre in Shikma Prison one week after his arrest in November 2023. The Israeli authorities concealed the news of his death for more than seven months.
The repeated killing of doctors inside detention facilities, along with the detention of medical personnel and the stripping away of their legal and healthcare rights, is deeply connected to the broader assault on Gaza's health sector. It serves as a tool for its destruction from within. Israel not only bombs hospitals, rendering them out of service, but also targets doctors and health workers who remain and attempt to keep hospitals functioning or salvage what can be saved. This reflects a deliberate strategy to incapacitate healthcare provision and to punish health workers for fulfilling their humanitarian duties amid ongoing genocide, siege, and the complete breakdown of the health system.
The international community, particularly the states parties to the Geneva Conventions and those with influence over Israel, must take urgent and effective action to secure the immediate and unconditional release of the two doctors, Hussam Abu Safiya and Marwan Al-Hams, and to protect their physical and psychological safety. These states bear a legal obligation to ensure respect for international humanitarian law, which requires them to use available diplomatic and legal pressure to halt the torture and arbitrary detention of the two doctors and to protect them within Israeli detention facilities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross must intensify its urgent efforts with the Israeli authorities and, within the scope of its humanitarian mandate, ensure immediate and unrestricted access to the two doctors at their places of detention, visit them without delay, assess their health and conditions of detention, and ensure the immediate provision of urgent and appropriate medical care for them, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
The Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court must urgently open an investigation into the crimes of torture, cruel and inhuman treatment, and killing inside Israeli detention facilities, and include these crimes within the scope of the ongoing investigation into the Situation in Palestine and any current or subsequent requests for arrest warrants. The investigations must encompass the political, military, and security officials who ordered these crimes, incited them, facilitated their commission, or failed to prevent them and to punish their perpetrators, in particular Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, as the political official responsible for the Israel Prison Service, in light of his public role in tightening the conditions of detention for Palestinian prisoners and detainees and in inciting against them.
The UN Special Procedures, particularly the Special Rapporteur on Torture and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, must act urgently within their mandates, including by addressing the Israeli authorities, requesting immediate clarification on the fate, health, and detention conditions of the two doctors, demanding an end to their torture and arbitrary detention, and calling for their release and that of all arbitrarily detained health workers.
