Film unveils identity of Israeli soldier who killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
The filmmakers of a new documentary about the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh say they have identified the Israeli soldier who sniped her in the West Bank city of Jenin in 2022.
The 40-minute investigative documentary titled “Who Killed Shireen?”, released on Thursday by Washington, DC-based media organization Zeteo, attributes the murder to Alon Skajio.
Al Jazeera’s Bisan Abu Kweik, featured in the film, stated that the soldier was later killed during an Israeli military raid in Jenin, the same city where Shireen was murdered.
The film also exposes efforts by the United States to prevent holding Israel responsible for the murder.
Then US President Joe Biden had “concluded early on that an Israeli soldier had intentionally targeted her, but that conclusion was overruled internally,” Dion Nissenbaum, the executive producer of the documentary, said.
“We found some concerning evidence that both Israel and the Biden administration had covered up Shireen’s killing and allowed the soldier to get away without any accountability,” he added.
Wearing press attire, the 51-year-old journalist was murdered with a bullet to the head while covering an Israeli military raid on the refugee camp on May 11, 2022. Later, her funeral was also attacked by the regime’s forces.
On May 26, 2022, Palestinian Attorney General Akram al-Khatib confirmed the results of a preliminary investigation, insisting that Abu Akleh had been struck with an armor-piercing bullet fired from a semi-automatic Ruger Mini-14 rifle while she was wearing a helmet and a vest clearly marked with the word “PRESS.”
Israeli regime officials initially blamed her murder on Palestinian resistance fighters, but all evidence suggested otherwise. Later, the regime officials refused even to conduct a probe into the incident, aware of the result.
Five months after the killing, an Israeli military probe finally acknowledged that there was a “strong possibility” that Israeli forces fired the shot “accidentally”, without ruling out fratricide.
Abu Akleh was born in the occupied al-Quds in 1971 and had a degree in journalism from Yarmouk University in Jordan. After graduation, she returned to Palestine to work in her field and joined Al Jazeera in 1977.
