- The documentary “Who Killed Shireen?”, produced by independent news site Zeteo, names the suspect for the first time: Alon Scagio, an elite soldier.
NEW YORK: A new documentary is set to name the Israeli soldier who killed Al Jazeera reporter Shirin Abu Akleh, who was shot dead in the West Bank while reporting in 2022.
Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American journalist known for her reporting on the Arab-Israeli conflict, was shot dead in Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank while working, wearing a bulletproof vest with the word “press” written on it.
Al Jazeera and witnesses immediately blamed the Israeli army. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the shots were likely fired by Palestinian militants.
In the following weeks, several investigative journalists placed the blame on Israeli artillery.
Months later, Israel released the results of an internal investigation that found a “high probability” that Abu Akleh was accidentally shot by the Israeli army, which said it was targeting armed Palestinians.
The documentary “Who Killed Shireen?”, produced by independent news site Zeteo, names the suspect for the first time: Alon Skadjo, an elite soldier.
“Israel did everything they could to hide the soldier's identity, they didn't give the US any information. They didn't allow the US to interview him. They didn't give the US his statement. And they didn't give his name,” said Dion Nissenbaum, a journalist who worked on the film.
With the assistance of producer Connor Powell and reporter Fatima AbdulKarim, who worked for The New York Times in the West Bank, Nissenbaum, a former Wall Street Journal correspondent, reviewed the testimony of two Israeli soldiers present in Jenin on May 11, 2022, as well as senior U.S. officials.
The documentary claims that Skajo, then 20, had completed training in the elite Duvdevan unit just three months earlier.
“He shot her intentionally. There is no doubt about that. The question is, did he know she was a journalist and did he know she was Shirin Abu Akleh? Was that an order from above?” Nissenbaum told AFP.
“Personally, I don't think it was an order. I don't think he knew it was Shireen. No one ever made it clear that he could tell it was Shireen. But she was wearing a blue flak jacket with 'press' written on it.”
“The evidence (suggests)… this was a deliberate killing of Shirin Abu Akleh. Whether they knew it was her or not is very much up for debate, but they would have known it was a media personality or at least a non-combatant,” said a senior official in then-President Joe Biden's administration, speaking anonymously in the film.
The documentary claims that Washington did not exert significant pressure on the issue for fear of antagonizing its ally.
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen said he urged Biden to declassify documents on the killing but received no response.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said “this is the first time a potential suspect has been named in connection with the killing of a journalist by Israel,” according to its records dating back to 1992.
Impunity in this case “effectively gave Israel license to silence hundreds more” journalists, CPJ said.
Reporters Without Borders estimates that around 200 journalists have been killed in Israeli strikes on the Gaza Strip over the past 18 months.
An Israeli military spokesman condemned the unauthorized disclosure of the suspect's name despite the lack of a “definitive determination” of who shot Abu Akleh.
The army added that the deceased soldier “died while carrying out combat missions.”
Nissenbaum initially thought Skadjo died in Gaza, but ultimately concluded that he was killed in Jenin on June 27, 2024, nearly two years after Abu Akleh.
