By Emma Farge
GENEVA, July 6 (Reuters) - A U.N. human rights body on Monday called Israel’s detention of Gazan doctor Hussam Abu Safiya arbitrary and urged his immediate release, as rights groups and his lawyer warned that his life was in imminent danger.
In its finding, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Israel's actions contravened multiple articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
"The appropriate remedy would be to release Mr. Abu Safiya immediately and accord him an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations," it said.
The panel also raised broader concerns, saying the case — one of several submitted to it — “may indicate a widespread or systematic practice of arbitrary detention in the country.”
The Israel Prison Service and the Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel did not respond to the U.N. working group when approached about the case in July last year, it said.
MENA Rights Group, which filed the complaint, said the 52‑year‑old paediatrician and director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital has been held since December 2024. It said he has faced repeated solitary confinement, lengthy interrogations and beatings with batons and electric shock sticks.
Earlier on Monday, his lawyer Nasser Odeh said via a prisoners' group that his health was in grave danger and that he had been subjected to daily abuse.
Video footage of him from a Supreme Court hearing last month showed him looking visibly thinner.
"If Dr Abu Safiya dies in that cell, it will be murder, and everyone who had the power to stop it - and did nothing - will be complicit," said Steve Cutts, CEO of charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
The Israel Prison Service previously rejected allegations that Abu Safiya and other doctors have been mistreated in prison.
Last month, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal to release him. It based its decision on "confidential materials" under a law for so-called unlawful combatants which also allows detention for indefinitely renewable periods.
The Israeli military has accused Abu Safiya of being a member of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. It has not provided evidence and Gaza's health ministry and Hamas have denied the allegation.
Abu Safiya is among at least 14 doctors from Gaza who have been detained in Israel without charge for more than a year.
His case is emblematic of "Israel's systematic targeting of Palestinian healthcare workers, which has contributed to the collapse of Gaza's healthcare system...," Tanya Boulakovski, research lead at MENA Rights Group, told Reuters.
In 2023, Abu Safiya was among the doctors who refused to leave the dozens of newborn infants they were treating after the Israeli military ordered them to leave.
The U.N. working group's legal interpretations are non-binding but are sometimes cited as evidence in cases before international courts.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Nidal Al Mughrabi in Cairo and Rami Ayyub in Jerusalem; editing by Friederike Heine and Ros Russell)
