CPJ demands progress on US probe of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh’s 2022 killing

The Committee to Protect Journalists calls for US authorities to relaunch their investigation into the IDF’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed while reporting for Al Jazeera in the West Bank in 2022.

In a letter to the US Department of Justice — which oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation — and FBI chief Kash Patel, the global press freedoms group demanded a “public progress update” on Abu Akleh’s death.

“Although the FBI reportedly opened an investigation into her killing in November 2022, it has made no demonstrable progress,” the letter notes, adding that CPJ is “not aware that any formal interviews have been conducted with witnesses despite the willingness of multiple witnesses to cooperate.”

“This troubling lack of concrete progress — four years after Abu Akleh’s death — represents a profound failure of the US government to respond promptly and impartially to the killing of one of its citizens by a foreign military,” the letter says.

Abu Akleh, a 51-year-old Palestinian-American correspondent, was wearing a vest marked “Press” and a helmet when she was killed while covering clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in the Jenin refugee camp on May 11, 2022.

Following the killing of Abu Akleh, the IDF initially blamed Palestinian gunmen but later acknowledged that she could have also been killed by Israeli soldiers.

In September 2022, the IDF concluded “with very high likelihood” that a single soldier shot the journalist after “misidentifying her.”