Al Jazeera Media Network reported Tuesday that it had submitted a formal request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and prosecute those responsible for her death. Abu Akleh, 51, a veteran Al Jazeera correspondent, was shot and killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli military raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in the northern West Bank. Al Jazeera said its submission to the ICC included a “dossier on a comprehensive six-month investigation” that it carried out, including “eyewitness evidence and video footage, as well as new material on the killing of Abu Akleh.” Rodney Dixon KC, the lawyer for Al Jazeera, said the network submitted the case “in the context of a wider attack on Al Jazeera, and journalists in Palestine,” and asserted that the killing of Abu Akleh was “part of a wider pattern.”
The “new material,” Al Jazeera claims, shows that “Shireen and her colleagues were directly fired at” by Israeli troops, contradicting Israeli claims that she was killed in crossfire. The Qatari news outlet said this new evidence “shows that this deliberate killing was part of a wider campaign to target and silence Al Jazeera.”
Al Jazeera says its request to the ICC complements one that Abu Akleh’s family submitted in September, supported by the Palestinian Press Syndicate and the International Federation of Journalists.