DOHA (Dispatches) -- Al Jazeera has
submitted a formal request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute Israeli soldiers responsible for killing Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the network announced on Tuesday.
Abu Akleh, 51, a veteran reporter for Al Jazeera Arabic and a household name across the Arab world, was shot dead on 11 May while covering a Zionist military raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
Her death, which was widely condemned, sparked multiple investigations, including one by the UN, which concluded that Israeli forces likely killed her.
On Tuesday, the same day the request was filed, the occupying regime’s far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, called for the expulsion of Al Jazeera from Occupied Palestine.
A Zionist military investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing in September concluded that she was likely shot by an Israeli soldier but was not deliberately targeted.
According to Al Jazeera’s lawyer, Rodney Dixon KC, the request was filed in the context of what the network perceives as a wider attack on Al Jazeera and journalists in Palestine, referring to incidents such as the bombing of the channel’s Gaza office on 15 May 2021.
“The focus is on Shireen, and this particular killing, this outrageous killing. But the evidence we submit looks at all of the acts against Al Jazeera because it has been targeted as an international media organization and the evidence shows that what the [Israeli] authorities are trying to do is to shut it up,” Al Jazeera quoted Dixon as saying.
Al Jazeera spent six months investigating the incident and gathering eyewitness statements, video footage and other material to hand over to the Hague court. None of it has been made public.
Last week, Al Jazeera aired a documentary that showed how Abu Akleh and other journalists wearing protective helmets and bulletproof vests marked with the word “PRESS” came under fire.
The network’s request follows a complaint submitted to the ICC by Abu Akleh’s family in September, together with the Palestinian Press Syndicate and the International Federation of Journalists.
The ICC decided in 2021 that is has jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank.
An investigation by NGO Forensic Architecture and the Ramallah-based human rights organization Al-Haq in September found that Abu Akleh and her colleagues were explicitly targeted despite being identifiable as members of the press.