Original article by republished form Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
Healthcare workers and allies rally to demand the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and all Palestinian healthcare workers held in Israeli jails, in New York City, on January 6, 2025. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“We won’t forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023,” said CodePink.
Ahead of Saturday’s one-year anniversary of Israel abducting Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya from the Gaza hospital he ran, advocates demanded the release the scores of health workers still imprisoned by Israeli occupation forces.
“One year ago, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the Israeli military along with dozens of other medical staff during a horrific raid on the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Gaza,” Dr. Yipeng Ge, a member of Doctors Against Genocide, said Friday on social media. “Free Hussam Abu Safiya. Free them all.”
Activist Petra Schurenhofer said on X: “It’s been a year since Israel abducted and illegally detained Dr Hussam Abu Safiya. And since then he has been languishing in an Israeli jail, being subjected to cruel and inhumane treatment. Don’t forget him. And don’t stop calling for his release.”
Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya was abducted by the IOF from Kamal Adwan Hospital one year ago this week.Israel has detained & tortured Dr. Abu Safiya for one whole year.We won't forget him nor the 360+ health workers Israel has abducted from Gaza since October 2023.
Abu Safiya, the 52-year-old director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, was seized on December 27, 2024 as Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops continued their yearlong siege and raids on the facility in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza. The IDF claimed without evidence that Kamal Adwan—the last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza at the time—was a Hamas command center.
During a previous Israeli attack on Kamal Adwan, Abu Safiya’s 15-year-old son was killed in a drone strike. Abu Safiya was seriously wounded in a separate drone attack that left six pieces of shrapnel in his leg.
After his capture, Abu Safiya was first jailed at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in Israel’s Negev Desert—where dozens of detainees have died and where torture, rape, and other abuses have been reported—and then Ofer Prison in the illegally occupied West Bank.
Abu Safiya said he has endured torture by his captors—including beatings with batons and electric shocks—and suffered severe weight loss, broken ribs, and other injuries, for which he was allegedly denied adequate medical care.
A year has passed since the detention of my father, In this white coat, he walked alone amidst death, destruction, and in front of tanks—not because he was fearless, but because his oath and his humanity were greater than any fear. He refused to abandon the children and the… pic.twitter.com/8NtuIGBeYf
— Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya د.حسام أبو صفية (@HussamAbuSafiya) December 26, 2025
Israeli authorities deny these accusations. However, there have been many documented and otherwise credible reports of health and medical workers being tortured by Israeli forces—sometimes fatally, as in the case of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, who headed the orthopedic department at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
Abu Safiya remains in Israeli custody, despite having not been charged with any crimes. Israeli courts have extended his detention multiple times under so-called “unlawful combatant” legal provisions.
In January, Abu Safiya’s mother died of a heart attack that MedGlobal, the Illinois-based nonprofit for which Abu Safiya worked as lead Gaza physician, attributed to “severe sadness” over her son’s plight.
According to United Nations agencies and other experts, Israeli forces have destroyed or damaged nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals in hundreds of attacks since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 1,500 Palestinian health workers have been killed.
Last year, an independent United Nations commission found that “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
Albina Abu Safiya, the imprisoned doctor’s wife, pleaded last week: “Save my husband before it is too late. His only ‘crime’ was saving the wounded and tending to the wounds of children.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAOrcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Palestinian Abdullah Barghouti, a leading commander for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas in the West Bank, is escorted by Israeli police into the Magistrate’s Court for a hearing in Jerusalem on June 20, 2012. [MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP via Getty Images]
Hamas has warned of a “slow-motion execution” being carried out on its senior Palestinian prisoners in Israeli occupation jails.
In a press statement received by Quds Press on Tuesday, senior Hamas leader Abdulrahman Shedeed said that the treatment of their brave prisoners — including torture, ill-treatment and the denial of even the most basic rights — is a stain on humanity and a disgrace for every self-proclaimed human-rights defender.
Shedeed specifically condemned the repeated, brutal beatings and deliberate ill-treatment of the imprisoned leader Abdullah al-Barghouti in Gilboa prison, calling it a politically directed attempt at slow execution. He argued that this is a direct echo of threats made by extremist far-right figure Ben Gvir, who has spoken of executing prisoners and targeting their leaders.
He also raised alarm over al-Barghouti’s health and that of other prisoners, accusing the Israeli prison authorities of systemic medical neglect and denying prisoners access to treatment. According to Shedeed, this reflects a calculated campaign to break the will of the prison movement and undermine its resilience.
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Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
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A Palestinian man pass the graffiti showing Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian imprisoned politician on December 24, 2023 in Bethlehem, West Bank [Maja Hitij/Getty Images]
The Prisoners’ Media Office warned Monday that prominent Palestinian detainee Abdullah Barghouti, 53, is being subjected to severe and prolonged physical and psychological torture inside Israel’s Gilboa Prison, describing his treatment as a form of “slow execution.”
In a press statement, the office — affiliated with Hamas — said Barghouti has endured “systematic and repeated assaults” for more than 25 months. According to the statement, prison guards raid his cell day and night, often accompanied by dogs, announcing they “missed beating him” before restraining him and assaulting him with batons. The office reported that these attacks cause bleeding and deep wounds that prisoners are forced to treat using torn clothing and minimal cleaning supplies.
Barghouti, who is serving 67 life sentences, is reportedly suffering from untreated fractures in his right elbow and hand that have persisted for three months. He also has a broken finger, fractures in two ribs on the right side of his chest, torn tendons, and has lost approximately 35 kilograms due to the “starvation” policy pursued by the prison administration.
The Office added that Barghouti has been subjected to electric shocks and deliberately doused with water during torture sessions. He has also been placed in a room infested with scabies, resulting in widespread boils across his body. The statement says he now has severe difficulty moving his hands, with one nearly paralyzed, while prison authorities continue to deny him medical care or even basic pain relief. Human rights organizations are also being prevented from contacting him.
The office said Barghouti’s case reflects an “open war” against leaders of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, adding that violations have reached the level of “attempted deliberate killing.” It called on international human rights and humanitarian bodies to intervene urgently to stop the torture, ensure Barghouti receives medical treatment, and hold those responsible accountable.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
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Civil defense and Red Cross teams are seen during the burial of 30 Palestinians whose bodies were handed over by Israel under the ceasefire agreement, in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on November 14, 2025. [Mohammed Nassar – Anadolu Agency]
In light of Israel’s continued return of hundreds of Palestinian bodies who were killed under torture, blindfolded, restrained, bearing marks of abuse and fatal gunshots, many of them so mutilated that they were interred as unidentified, it has become essential to reopen the file of mass abductions, torture, and extrajudicial killings targeting Palestinians from Gaza. The scale and gravity of these violations require immediate investigation through all available legal, diplomatic, and humanitarian avenues to safeguard the tens of thousands whose fate remains unknown.
The disturbing images of Palestinian prisoners of war tortured to death were not the only scenes to shake Palestinians. Equally horrifying were the testimonies of civilian hostages recently released by Israeli authorities after establishing that they bore no affiliation to Palestinian resistance groups. These civilians describe harrowing abuse, severe torture, degrading treatment, humiliation, and assaults that violate their dignity, humanity, and personal honor, violations rendered even more acute within a conservative cultural context. The methods described reflect an extreme level of brutality, challenging the limits of human comprehension and constituting serious breaches of international humanitarian law.
The British newspaper The Guardian has disclosed the existence of an underground Israeli detention torture facility, while testimonies from civilians recently permitted to return to Gaza revealed the existence of additional similar sites. Israel continues to conceal thousands of civilians and combatants who disappeared from Gaza and its surrounding areas, withholding their identities, actual numbers, location, and fate. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Israel has denied all requests and blocked all attempts for access to visit them, an alarming sign of the opacity surrounding their safety.
Such practices amount to enforced disappearance and torture of protected persons under international humanitarian law, whether they are prisoners of war captured by Israeli forces during hostilities or civilians seized during the fighting, in occupied territory. These acts fall squarely under the legal framework of the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949 and 1977 Additional Protocols, which apply fully in this context, and prohibit such violations unequivocally.
Israel amended its domestic legislation after the 7 October attacks two years ago, to permit the authorities to prolong periods of detention and interrogation prior to judicial review. According to several Israeli attorneys who were granted access to prisons during the most recent hostilities, a significant number of detainees are civilians, and their detention orders are being renewed in short remote video sessions conducted without legal counsel. The process has deepened concerns about arbitrary detention and the erosion of fundamental legal protections, and has raised serious concerns under international human rights and humanitarian law, particularly regarding due process guarantees.
These developments unfold within an Israeli legal system that has long been criticised as discriminatory. Israel systematically refuses to acknowledge the reality of occupying Palestine which widely internationally recognised, affirmed by global courts, international organisations, and the overwhelming majority of states. In 2002, Israel incorporated the category of “unlawful combatant” into its national laws, a designation intended to deny Palestinian resistance fighters, affiliated with armed national liberation movements, the protections afforded the Third Geneva Convention and its First Additional Protocol. This constitutes a unilateral measure that stands in direct violation of Israel’s binding treaty obligations and customary international humanitarian law.
Israel’s confrontation with the Palestinians extends beyond the occupation of their land and the transformation of its demographic and territorial realities. It also encompasses systematic assaults on their humanity and dignity, aiming to erode the integrity of the Palestinian individual, an objective reflected in the aforementioned patterns of abuse. Concurrently, Israel continues its information war as well, reshaping facts and broadcasting them to the world through the lens of its own narrative, and on its own terms. Much of the Western world, particularly the United States, has consciously adopted this narrative and its accompanying terminology.
Israel characterises Israelis held in Gaza, whether civilian or military personnel, though most are military due to universal conscription, as “hostages,” a designation intended to elicit humanising sympathy. By contrast, Israeli authorities officially classify Palestinians, whether civilians or combatants, as “detainees” or “security prisoners,” depriving them of the protections guaranteed under international law and diminishing the global empathy with their situation
It’s understandable that Israeli media and even domestic human rights organisations employ Israel’s official terminology, when addressing captivity, detention, and abduction in the recent conflict, and this is nothing new , but what is not understandable is the alignment of Western, particularly American, media with these classifications.
An examination of coverage in prominent American newspapers reveals a consistent adherence to Israeli terminology. The term “hostage” is reserved exclusively for Israelis held in Gaza. Conversely, referring to Palestinian fighters as “prisoners of war”, a term recognised under international humanitarian law, is effectively forbidden from the discourse. Even the legally precise term “arbitrary detention,” applicable to civilians held without due process, is seldom used. Instead, Palestinians are routinely described as detainees, prisoners, or even “terrorists,”reinforcing a narrative that strips them of legal protections and public sympathy, and reflecting a broader linguistic asymmetry that shapes public perception.
The discrimination in US media coverage extended beyond terminology to both the scale and nature of reporting. Even the most liberal American outlets, those generally viewed as more sympathetic to Palestinians, dedicated two-thirds more coverage to Israelis held in Gaza than to Palestinian prisoners of war or civilians detained arbitrarily. In publications more explicitly aligned with Israeli perspectives, such as The New York Times, this gap rose to nearly 90 per cent.
Regarding the qualitative dimension of reporting, much of the US press adopted a highly individualised and humanised narrative when covering Israeli captives with intimate, personal stories designed to draw sympathy. Meanwhile, when addressing Palestinian prisoners of war or civilians detained arbitrarily, whether tortured or killed, coverage tended to be brief, impersonal, and collective, emphasising raw statistics and summary figures derived from UN or human rights reports rather than individual human experiences. The individuals themselves, and the human cost of their suffering, were largely absent from the narrative.
In sum, the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis continues unabated, and the contest over terminology is an integral component of its broader dynamics, impossible to ignore, and difficult to separate from the wider conflict. For Palestinians, political objectives shape terminology just as much as legal definitions do, and political imperatives have to influence the language used to describe their reality, alongside the legal classifications embedded in international humanitarian and human rights law. In this context, establishing clear and consistent terminology has become essential to navigating a fight for survival. Equally imperative is the systematic documentation and disclosure of the grave violations committed against Palestinian prisoners of war and civilians detained arbitrarily, or the Palestinians kidnapped and forcibly disappeared. Exposing the crimes committed against them is no longer optional, it is an obligation that is both national responsibility and ethical duty.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
A guard stands outside a cell of prisoners at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in Tecoluca, in San Vicente, El Salvador on April 4, 2025. (Photo by Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“The US government has not been linked to acts of systematic torture on this scale since Abu Ghraib.”
“You have arrived in hell.”
That’s what the director of El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) told 26-year-old Gonzalo Y., one of the 252 Venezuelans deported by US President Donald Trump to the infamous prison in March and April, according to a report released Wednesday.
The report was compiled by US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Cristosal, a regional group that fledEl Salvador in July, citing harassment and legal threats from President Nayib Bukele’s government. They used the CECOT director’s comment to Gonzalo as a title.
“When we arrived at the entrance of CECOT, guards made us kneel so they could shave our heads… One of the officers hit me on the legs with a baton, and I fell to the ground on my knees,” Gonzalo said. “The guards beat me many times, in the hallways of the prison module and in the punishment cell… They beat us almost every day.”
NEW: The Venezuelan nationals the US government sent to El Salvador in March and April were tortured and subjected to other abuses, including sexual violence.In a new report, HRW and @cristosal.bsky.social provide a comprehensive account of the treatment of these people in El Salvador.
Gonzalo is among 40 detainees interviewed for the report. The groups also spoke with 150 individuals with credible knowledge of the conditions, such as lawyers and relatives; consulted international forensic experts; and reviewed “a wide range” of materials, including criminal records, judicial documents in El Salvador and the United States, and photographs of injuries.
While the US and Salvadoran governments claimed that most of the migrants sent to CECOT were part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, HRW and Cristosal found that “many of them had not been convicted of any crimes by federal or state authorities in the United States, nor in Venezuela or other Latin America countries where they had lived.”
Up until they were sent to Venezuela as part of a prisoner exchange on July 18, the report states, “the people held in CECOT were subjected to inhumane prison conditions, including prolonged incommunicado detention, inadequate food, denial of basic hygiene and sanitation, limited access to healthcare and medicine, and lack of recreational or educational activities, in violation of several provisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also known as the ‘Mandela Rules.’”
“We also documented that detainees were subjected to constant beatings and other forms of ill-treatment, including some cases of sexual violence,” the publication continues. “Many of these abuses constitute torture under international human rights law.”
According to the 81-page report:
Daniel B., for instance, described how officers beat him after he spoke with [ International Committee of the Red Cross] staff members during their visit to CECOT in May. He said guards took him to “the Island,” where they beat him with a baton. He said a blow made his nose bleed. “They kept hitting me, in the stomach, and when I tried to breathe, I started to choke on the blood. My cellmates shouted for help, saying they were killing us, but the officers said they just wanted to make us suffer,” he said.
Three people held in CECOT told Human Rights Watch and Cristosal that they were subjected to sexual violence. One of them said that guards took him to “the Island,” where they beat him. He said four guards sexually abused him and forced him to perform oral sex on one of them. “They played with their batons on my body.” People held in CECOT said sexual abuse affected more people, but victims were unlikely to speak about what they had suffered due to stigma.
In a Wednesday statement, Cristosal executive director Noah Bullock drew a comparison to the early stages of the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.
“The US government has not been linked to acts of systematic torture on this scale since Abu Ghraib and the network of clandestine prisons during the War on Terror,” he said. “Disappearing people into the hands of a government that tortures them runs against the very principles that historically made the United States a nation of laws.”
Although many migrants have been freed from El Salvador’s CECOT, “they continue to suffer lasting physical injuries and psychological trauma,” the report notes. They also face risks in Venezuela, which “suffers a humanitarian crisis and systematic human rights violations carried out by the administration of Nicolás Maduro.”
“Their repatriation to Venezuela violates the principle of nonrefoulement,” the document explains. “Additionally, in some cases, members of the Venezuelan intelligence services have appeared at the homes of people who were held in CECOT and forced them to record videos regarding their treatment in the United States.”
The CECOT renditions were crimes under both domestic and international law. and some people remain disappeared. www.hrw.org/report/2025/…
The report notably comes as Trump has spent recent months blowing up small boats from Venezuela under the guise of combating drug trafficking—which experts across the globe have condemned as blatantly illegal—and as the White Housestokes fears of strikes within the country aimed at forcing regime change.
Stressing that “officials cannot summarily kill people they accuse of smuggling drugs,” HRW Washington director Sarah Yager has called on the US military to “immediately halt any plans for future unlawful strikes” on boats in the Caribbean and Congress to “open a prompt and transparent investigation.”
With the release of the new report, HRW and Cristosal also issued fresh demands, including an end to the United States’ transfer of third-country nationals to El Salvador and for other nations and international bodies, including the United Nations Human Rights Council, to increase scrutiny of the Trump and Bukele governments’ human rights violations.
“The Trump administration paid El Salvador millions of dollars to arbitrarily detain Venezuelans who were then abused by Salvadoran security forces on a near-daily basis,” said HRW Americas director Juanita Goebertus. “The Trump administration is complicit in torture, enforced disappearance, and other grave violations, and should stop sending people to El Salvador or any other country where they face a risk of torture.”
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
