(Ramallah) The Palestinian Authority handed over to the Americans for expertise the bullet that killed the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, star reporter for the Al Jazeera channel, the Palestinian prosecutor told AFP on Saturday.
Posted at 3:36 p.m.
Prosecutor Akram Al-Khatib said that the fatal bullet to Shireen Abu Akleh, killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli military operation in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, had been handed over to the United States, which will assess it.
The prosecutor answered with a “yes” to the question of whether the bullet had been turned over to the Americans. He added that the latter had pledged to return it to the Palestinians.
According to Palestinian sources in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, the expertise will be conducted at the US Embassy in Jerusalem.
According to the Palestinian prosecutor, it is a 556 mm caliber bullet fired by a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic rifle.
These latest developments come less than two weeks before US President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel and the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967, as part of his first tour of the Middle East since assuming the White House.
The Palestinian Authority, Al Jazeera and Qatar, the country financing Al Jazeera, accused, immediately after her death, the Israeli army of having killed the Palestinian journalist, who also holds American nationality.
And on June 24, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that the journalist had been killed by Israeli fire.
The Israeli army keeps saying that it is “impossible to determine whether (the journalist) was killed by a Palestinian gunman firing indiscriminately in the area where she was, or inadvertently by an Israeli soldier”.
She has also repeatedly called on the Palestinian Authority to give her the fatal bullet, the only way according to the Israeli military to really determine who fired. But the Palestinians refused and instead asked the Israelis to hand over the suspect weapon.
‘No Palestinian activity’
“All the information we have gathered – including from the Israeli army and the Palestinian attorney general – supports the fact that the shots that killed Mr.me Abu Akleh and injured his colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli forces and not from indiscriminate fire from armed Palestinians as initially claimed by Israeli authorities,” a spokeswoman for the High Commission Ravina Shamdasani said on June 24.
“We found no information to suggest that there was any activity by armed Palestinians near the journalists,” Mr.me Shamdasani, saying it was “deeply disturbing that the Israeli authorities did not open a judicial investigation”.
Israel has dismissed the UN charges, with Defense Minister Benny Gantz citing a “baseless” investigation.
But in recent weeks, journalistic investigations have also pointed in the direction of the Israeli army.
The journalist was wearing a bulletproof jacket with the word “press” written on it and a protective helmet when she was hit by a bullet just below the cut of her helmet.
She was on the outskirts of the Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold of Palestinian armed factions where Israeli forces were carrying out a raid in search of suspects after deadly attacks in Israel.