Al Jazeera journalist’s killing referred to ICC

Researchers present evidence Abu Akleh targeted

Associated Press

Al Jazeera journalist’s killing referred to ICC — The Times, 22 September 2022 — The Times · Beaver, Pennsylvania · 22 September 2022

Transcribed from the clipping

JERUSALEM — A coalition of lawyers and advocacy groups said Tuesday it has referred the fatal shooting of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to the International Criminal Court on behalf of her family, calling on prosecutors to investigate what it described as Israel’s deliberate targeting of the veteran reporter.

Palestinian officials, Abu Akleh’s family and Al Jazeera accuse Israel of intentionally targeting and killing the 51-year-old journalist, who was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked with the word “press” when she was shot in May in the occupied West Bank.

An international research group also presented its investigation into the fatal shooting, implicating an Israeli soldier in her death and alleging that the timing and trajectory of the bullets suggest Abu Akleh was deliberately targeted.

Israel has acknowledged that Israeli fire probably killed Abu Akleh, but vigorously denied allegations that a soldier intentionally targeted her. That point of contention has become central to Palestinian efforts to hold Israel accountable for the shooting.

Abu Akleh’s advocates said on Tuesday they have added her case to a legal complaint taken by the ICC that accuses Israel of deliberately killing and wounding Palestinian journalists wearing press vests in the West Bank and Gaza.

“Our family shouldn’t have to wait another day for justice,” Anton Abu Akleh, Shireen’s brother, told reporters from The Hague. “No other Palestinian-American or journalist family should have to endure what ours has.” Filing a complaint with the court does not guarantee that prosecutors will open an investigation.

If opened, such an investigation could take years, with actual prosecution far off. ICC prosecutors opened a preliminary examination into allegations of war crimes by Israel in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in 2015, but did not begin a formal investigation until last year.

Context added by this archive

The last clipping in this archive about what happens to people who report from the occupied territories. Between the 1948 dateline that said a dispatch had been passed by a censor and this one there are seventy-four years, and the thing being controlled has moved from the copy to the correspondent.

Cite this item

"Al Jazeera journalist’s killing referred to ICC," The Times, 22 September 2022. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2022-052. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2022-052