The head of Shifa hospital in Gaza said Monday that Israel tortured him "almost daily" during the seven months of his detention. Mohammed Abu Salmiya, who made the accusation on Monday when he returned to Gaza after being released, said others in prisons and detention centers in Israel received the same treatment, the Guardian reports. "What the prisoners are going through now has not happened in the history of the prisoner movement," Salmiya told NBC News. He was arrested in November but never charged.
The doctor was removed from a UN convoy in November as it was taking wounded civilians from the besieged hospital compound, which Israeli officials called a command center for Hamas, per the Washington Post. On Monday, he walked through the enclave with 54 other released Palestinians, some in gray prison clothes, as they reunited with family members. The doctor said he was held in multiple prisons in Israel. Asked about conditions, he said, "When you seek treatment, you are tortured by the nurse and doctor, and this is against international conventions." The mistreatment included physical and psychological humiliation, deprivation of food and medicine, and assaults with batons and dogs, Abu Salmiya said.
He was held under a 2002 law that allows Israeli's military to hold Gazans for extended periods without charging them and classifying them as prisoners of war. The release Monday drew criticism in Israel and stirred accusations of blame among officials. Benny Gantz, a rival to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said those freed included militants who helped carry out Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 people. "Whoever made the decision lacked judgment—and should be fired today," he posted on Telegram. (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)
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