Calls Grow to Bring Abu Akleh Murderers to Justice

Date: 12 May 2023 - 23:32

News ID: ۱۱۴۹۴۴

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – On the one-year anniversary of the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, Democracy for the Arab World (Dawn) is calling on the Biden administration to make public the U.S. security coordinator’s report and to publicly acknowledge the FBI investigation into Akleh’s murder.
“One year on, not one question about Shireen’s murder has been addressed by the U.S. government. Congress has sent letters and asked for confidential hearings, while her family, media outlets and press freedom, journalists and human rights organizations have worked to expose what really happened and who is responsible,” Adam Shapiro, director of Advocacy at Dawn, said in a statement.
“Accountability is achievable, but requires the Biden administration to fulfill its own responsibilities to protect American citizens’ lives and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
Abu Akleh, who had worked for 25 years for Al Jazeera Arabic, was shot dead by Zionist troops on 11 May 2022 while covering a raid by the occupying regime in Jenin.
The occupying regime had initially said Palestinian gunmen may have been responsible for the death but then backtracked on its statement.
Her death sparked Palestinian outrage and widespread international condemnation. Since the killing, investigations by The Washington Post, The New York Times, as well as international bodies and the United Nations, concluded that Zionist troops had in fact likely killed Abu Akleh.

Cornerstone Laid for
Press Museum

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials and the Al Jazeera Media Network laid the cornerstone for the Shireen Abu Akleh press museum in Ramallah in the central Israeli-occupied West Bank on the first anniversary of her death.
“Shireen was the witness and the martyr,” said Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh at Thursday’s ceremony.
“Today, we immortalize the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh in this museum, which will document Palestinian journalism and media.”
The event was attended by Abu Akleh’s family, Ramallah Mayor Issa Kassis and other officials, as well as the head of the Palestine Journalists’ Syndicate, Nasser Abu Bakr, and several diplomatic and civil society figures.
“We will continue to go after those killers, those criminals. We do not believe in the investigation committee that they announced, or its results. We want there to be an independent investigation,” Shtayyeh told Abu Akleh’s brother, Anton, as he unveiled the cornerstone.
The museum is set to open in 2025, on 4,709sq m (50,687 sq feet) of land allocated by the Ramallah municipality. While Al Jazeera has undertaken the costs of construction, the municipality will be in charge of the museum once it opens to the public.
The Zionist regime has taken no accountability for its killings of 20 journalists over the past two decades, a press watchdog’s report has revealed on the first anniversary Abu Akleh’s killing.
In a report released on Tuesday by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), it showed a map of 20 locations where journalists killed in Palestine and its occupied territories since 2001, consisting of seven killings in the West Bank and 13 in the Gaza Strip.