Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Hussam Abu Safiya, a Hamas terrorist who ran Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, against his ongoing detention, Haaretz reported.
The full text of Justice Gila Canfy-Steinitz’s ruling had yet to be released, according to the Hebrew daily.
The court ordered his continued detention under the Unlawful Combatants Law without requiring prosecutors to file an indictment.
Abu Safiya was taken into Israel Defense Forces custody as a terrorist suspect during an arrest raid targeting a Hamas command center in the northern Gaza hospital on Dec. 28, 2024.
The hospital director has been held in solitary confinement at Israel’s Nafha Prison, a maximum-security facility located near Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev Desert.
Israeli researchers earlier this year located a 2016 photo of Abu Safiya in a Hamas “military” uniform at a ceremony marking the completion of Kamal Adwan Hospital. His picture appeared on the Gaza Medical Services’ Facebook page, a group operating under the Hamas-run Health Ministry.
The NGO Monitor research group said Abu Safiya’s social media posts also appeared to praise the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and included anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric.
Organizations including Amnesty International, the BBC and Qatar’s Al Jazeera have portrayed Abu Safiya’s arrest as part of Israel’s “systematic targeting of Palestinian health workers,” while omitting Arabic-language references identifying him as a colonel in Hamas-run Military Medical Services.
