US officer who probed Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing says IDF sniper knew he was firing at journalists
Col. Steve Gabavics tells NYT clues showed gunfire was deliberate, though Palestinian-American was not personally targeted, and Washington softened findings; others disagree
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A retired officer in the US military who investigated the 2022 killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the West Bank told The New York Times in a Monday report that he is certain an Israeli sniper was aware she was a journalist — though not her exact identity — when he shot her, contradicting the probe’s findings and the opinions of other investigators.
The 51-year-old Palestinian-American reporter was killed while covering clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian terror operatives in the Jenin refugee camp on May 11, 2022. She was wearing a vest marked “Press” and a helmet at the time.
The IDF initially blamed Palestinian gunmen, but following a probe, it later acknowledged that she was very likely shot by a soldier who “misidentified” her.
Col. Steve Gabavics told the NY Times he believes the soldier targeted Abu Akleh despite knowing she was a journalist and being able to see her vest was marked “Press.”
He further claimed then-US president Joe Biden’s administration softened its own findings despite what he said was clear evidence. Gabavics said that when the American conclusions, which did not find the shooting intentionally targeted journalists, were publicized, he and other colleagues “were just flabbergasted that this is what they put out.”
Col. Gabavics, a 30-year veteran of the US military police, including a stint as commander of the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, said radio recordings showed Israeli soldiers knew journalists were present and had faced no gunfire from their direction. He said his investigation showed that from the location of the military vehicle, a sniper would have clearly seen the reporters with their “Press” identification. He also said the precise, sequential shots that killed Abu Akleh and hit those around her did not indicate an accidental shooting from a spray of gunfire.
A NY Times investigation in 2022 found that 16 shots were fired from an IDF convoy during the incident.
From my weekend Gitmo prison visit:
Not a single assault on the guard force in the six-month tenure of warden Col. Steve Gabavics. pic.twitter.com/9Ei9nZwvFa— Carol Rosenberg (@carolrosenberg) December 15, 2016
Gabavics and other investigators “agreed that the Israeli soldier who shot Ms. Abu Akleh must have known that he was shooting at a journalist, though they did not believe that the shooter was targeting Ms. Abu Akleh specifically,” the Times report said.
The Monday report noted that investigators were deeply divided about the findings, and that others supported the overall conclusion that there was no proof the shooting was deliberate. Gabavics’s superior at the time, Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, insisted that there was insufficient evidence to prove an intentional attack.
“Ultimately, I had to make judgments based on the full set of facts and information available to me,” Fenzel told The Times. “I stand by the integrity of our work and remain confident that we reached the right conclusions.”
Gabvics said that of all the cases he covered in his career, “this was the one that probably bothered me the most,” because “we had everything there.”
In July 2022, the US State Department said that its probe of the shooting found that “gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh,” but that it also “found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances.”
Because the IDF found the shooting had been accidental, no prosecution was ever opened and the shooter was not named publicly.
A documentary aired earlier this year by Zeteo News, a left-wing news outlet founded by Israel critic Mehdi Hassan, identified Cpt. Alon Scagio, then a 20-year-old sharpshooter in the Duvdevan commando unit, as being behind the deadly shooting. Scagio was killed by a roadside bomb in Jenin last year at the age of 22.
That documentary cited an anonymous US official who worked on the case as saying a draft version of the American report concluded that she was shot intentionally, but the finding was softened to avoid friction with Israel. Monday’s New York Times report revealed that this official was Col. Gabavics.
According to a memorial page maintained by the army, Scagio was helping evacuate medical soldiers injured in an initial explosion that targeted an armored personnel carrier in June 2024 when a second bomb exploded, killing him.
Abu Akleh was highly respected in the Arab world for her decades covering Palestinians and other Arab communities. Posters with her face proliferated around the Arab world following her death.
The Times of Israel Community.