Foreign journalists reject police assertion that attacker pretended to be a reporter

Foreign journalists in Israel reject yesterday’s assertion by police that the Palestinian man who stabbed a Border Police officer near the West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday had been pretending to be a journalist in the moments before the attack, which allowed him to get closer to Israeli troops unnoticed.

In a statement, the Foreign Press Association says 29-year-old Mohammed Aqal “did not identify himself as a journalist, was not dressed in the protective gear of nearby journalists, did not speak to the journalists and did not have any equipment that would mark him as a journalist.”

The FPA says it rejects “attempts by police to link this act of violence with the presence of accredited journalists doing their work,” and condemns “disguis[ing] oneself as a journalist or exploit the presence of legitimate journalists to carry out a violent act.”