Freed hostage Iair Horn penned a message to US President Donald Trump on Thursday, pleading with him to help free his younger brother Eitan, who is still in captivity and not slated for release during the ceasefire’s first stage.

“While my body lies in Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, my heart and soul remain trapped in Gaza,” Horn wrote in a column for Fox News. “As long as my brother Eitan and the other hostages are held captive there, I too remain a hostage.”

Eitan, who is slated for release only in the tentative, second phase of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, is “seriously ill” and is suffering from “severe infections and dangerous fevers,” wrote Horn, who returned to Israel on Saturday after 498 days in Hamas captivity.

“Tragically, Eitan and dozens of others are not included in the current phase of releases that brought me home. Every hour that passes puts their lives at greater risk.”

Horn revealed that he and Eitan had been separated during their first month in captivity, but were reunited and “stayed side by side until the day of my release – a moment that tears at my heart every second of every day.”

“The conditions of our captivity were beyond anything humans should endure. The physical torture was unbearable, especially in those first months,” he said. “But it was the psychological torture that almost broke us – the constant fear that each breath could be our last, that any word or movement could trigger our captors’ violence.”

“We were starved, interrogated, abused,” wrote Horn. “I........

© The Times of Israel