Committee to Protect Journalists demands update on US probe of Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday demanded an “public progress update” on the FBI’s investigation into the Israeli military’s 2022 killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank.

In an open letter to the Justice Department and FBI chief Kash Patel, the CPJ expressed concern that the US had diluted its official assessment of her death.

The group urged the department and the FBI – which falls under the Justice Department – to “provide a public progress update on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a US citizen and journalist fatally shot on May 11, 2022, by the Israeli army while reporting in the West Bank city of Jenin, the letter said.

“The effectively stagnant status of this case is inconsistent with ensuring the security of US citizens anywhere in the world — a clear priority of President Donald J. Trump’s administration,” the letter said.

It noted that although the FBI opened an investigation into her killing in November 2022, “it has made no demonstrable progress more than three years later,” adding that there have been “no signs of FBI investigative activity to gather other evidence in Israel or Palestine.”

“This troubling lack of concrete progress — four years after Abu Akleh’s death — represents a profound failure of the U.S. government to respond promptly and impartially to the killing of one of its citizens by a foreign military,” the letter said.

“We therefore urge you to support justice and accountability by: • Providing a public update on the status of the investigation and reasons for delay. • Committing to a timeline for the FBI to complete a thorough criminal investigation and to publicly release its findings, with full transparency as to the methodology and conclusions.”

It also called for ensuring that the investigation “is impartial and independent, free from political considerations, and consistent with U.S. domestic laws and obligations recognized under international law.”