US Officer Says Findings on Israel’s “Intentional” Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh Was “Deliberately Softened”

Washington (QNN)- A retired US military officer who investigated Israel’s 2022 assassination of Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank said he is certain that an Israeli soldier intentionally shot her, adding that the findings of the investigation were “deliberately softened.”

According to The New York Times, citing five current and former U.S. officials who worked on the case, some officials convinced that the shooting was intentional.

One of these officials was Col. Steve Gabavics, a career military policeman with 30 years’ experience, including as the commandant of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay. At the time of the shooting, he was an official at the Office of the United States Security Coordinator. That office, which facilitates cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security services, conducted the US review of the shooting.

After Gabavics retired from the military in January, he went public, first in a documentary, and now in an interview with The New York Times, with his concerns that the US government had “soft-pedaled” the office’s findings to appease the Israeli occupation government.

He aired his views in a documentary released in May by Zeteo News that publicly identified for the first time the Israeli soldier who shot Abu Akleh. But Gabavics was not named in the documentary.

According to the film, the soldier responsible for the killing is 20-year-old Israeli soldier Alon Skajio. He was on his first combat mission in the West Bank.

Gabavics said, “The favoritism is always toward the Israelis. Very little of that goes to the Palestinians.”

Colonel Gabavics said he concluded the shooting was deliberate based on several factors, including the precision of the shots, hitting Abu Akleh’s head and a carob tree near her.

It has been three years since Israel’s killing of Abu Akleh while she was covering an Israeli military raid in Jenin. The military initially denied responsibility for her killing and even claimed that Palestinian fighters were to blame. Later, Israel admitted that there was a high possibility its forces were responsible.