‘He was torturing me inside the room,’ Kurdish doctor tells i24NEWS the dark realities of living under Hamas

“A guy came in black clothes, like Hamas militants, and called me an Israeli spy. Suddenly, maybe more than 100 young people surrounded me, and someone tried to beat me. I was really scared at that time because I was waiting for when they would kill me.”

This is what Dr. Baxtiyar Baram told i24NEWS’s Defense Correspondent Matthias Inbar in an exclusive interview about his time volunteering in Gaza during the war. A Kurdish physician, Baram volunteered to work in northern Gaza, but instead of caring for patients at Kamal Adwan hospital, he was nearly killed.

Baram says his humanity was stripped away before torture ever started. When they heard his name was Baxtiyar, they laughed, saying it’s a Kurdish name, not the “name of a human being.”

The Hamas militant tried to push Baram out of the hospital, but Baram refused, believing he was safe since he came to Gaza under the protection of the Arab umbrella of the United Nations, the WHO, and the Health Ministry of Gaza. Baram said even Hamas leadership was aware of him.

So instead of being pushed out of the hospital, Baram got pushed into a room within the hospital. “When I entered the room, I saw the room was a room for torture because it was like a prison jail door to be closed outside and inside, and there were the windows and rails that may be used before me for the torture.” He went on, “I knew from a day before that two young people were being killed, but I didn't know at that time it was in the same room.”

 Interviewer Matthias Inbar asked the doctor if he saw Hamas militants using the hospital.

“Yes, the guy was a Hamas militant inside the hospital. He was torturing me inside the room. He hit me, and he tried to kill me many times. He told me that he will kill me with his pistol. And even after that, when the manager of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, learned about that, he became very angry, and he tried to fire all of them because all the guards of the hospital supported that guy torturing me.”

Baram said the manager tried to change the security personnel, but nothing happened because Hamas’s military wing installed the security themselves. The Hamas militants, knowing they couldn’t be touched, mocked Baram, laughing at him and taunting him about the fact that they knew they tortured Baram, and nothing was going to happen to them.

 When pressed by Inbar about the fact that institutions like the UN and Doctors Without Borders claimed that Hamas was not inside those hospitals, the doctor quickly refuted it. “I have material that's from my organization, and I also have material from the head of the health of Gaza, which is Hamas, Dr. Muhyiddin, saying, ‘We apologize that we tortured you in the hospital.’” 

Doctor Baram emphatically stated, “The United Nations is lying.”

He went on, condemning the United Nations’s lack of actions. “When I was tortured, where was the United Nations and Gaza? I didn't see the United Nations or any one of them. So, I don't care about what the United Nations says. I care about the feeling of that eight-month-old Israeli child who Hamas took to the tunnel and killed. The United Nations wasn't there in that tunnel.”

Baram was not just tortured himself but was also forced to witness the rampant sexual abuse by Hamas.

“One of our colleagues, a doctor, was committing sexual abuse against one of the nurses.” He said that he was told by Gaza leaders to inform the WHO about any sexual abuse, but when he told his organization about the crime, Hamas came and tortured him for speaking out. No consequences were handed down to anyone for Baram’s torture, nor was any investigation conducted about sexual abuse.

There was no escaping Hamas’s cruelty for Doctor Baram. He ended the interview with i24NEWS by making it perfectly clear that Hamas and its militants were everywhere.

“In the hospitals, only the specialized medical staff is medical staff. The other part of the hospital is Hamas militants, like the cleaner, electrician, technician, and gas. All of them are Hamas militants. But you know, today, the propaganda is so much more powerful.”