Latest news with #Duvdevan
L'Orient-Le Jour
09-05-2025
- Politics
- L'Orient-Le Jour
Documentary identifies Israeli soldier allegedly responsible for killing journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022
A new documentary, released Thursday by Zeteo, an independent American media outlet, claims to have identified the Israeli soldier who allegedly shot al-Jazeera correspondent Shireen Abu Akleh in May 2022 in the occupied West Bank, where she was killed while reporting in Jenin. Abu Akleh was a Palestinian-American journalist who had worked for al-Jazeera since 1997, according to the Qatari channel. Initially blaming Palestinian fighters for the shooting, the Israeli army later acknowledged a 'high probability' that its forces had 'accidentally' killed the journalist. Zeteo, based in Washington, was founded by journalist Mehdi Hassan. It is dedicated, according to its website, to in-depth investigative journalism without corporate funding or sponsors, relying on contributions from its subscribers to finance its projects. 'It wasn't a problem for him' According to the outlet, the soldier accused of killing the journalist was Alan Scagio, a sniper from the Israeli army's Duvdevan unit, who was killed in June 2024 by an improvised roadside bomb in Jenin. In the film, a friend claimed that the shooter 'was not tormented' by the death of Abu Akleh. 'It wasn't a problem for him, but he was not proud of it either,' the friend stated, while also noting that since then, the Duvdevan unit 'uses the journalist's image as a target during shooting exercises.' According to the investigators who made the documentary, the soldier was subsequently transferred to another unit, to a command position, 'to distance him from the investigation' into the shooting. The documentary also pointed out that the Biden administration, based on numerous testimonies, 'knew or suspected' that the journalist was killed by an Israeli soldier, but continued to support Israeli versions citing Palestinian fighters' involvement, then accidental shooting. Washington reportedly also 'refused to put pressure' on Israel over this matter, 'to avoid angering the Israeli government.' Impunity This American stance and the impunity following the murder of Abu Akleh allegedly 'contributed to the deaths of other Americans and other civilians,' according to U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, interviewed in the documentary. The journalist's death occurred during a period of escalating Israeli raids in the West Bank in 2022, which resulted in dozens of deaths. Since then, and amid a violent Israeli offensive on Gaza, violence has increased in the West Bank, where Israel launched a broad operation last January, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians, notably from the Jenin camp. Already, since the start of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, triggered by the bloody attack by the Hamas movement against Israel, the West Bank has been plagued by violence. Since that date, at least 925 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers, according to figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry. At the same time, at least 33 Israelis, including soldiers, have been killed in the West Bank in Palestinian attacks or during military operations, according to official Israeli data.
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
New film claims to identify Israeli killer of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
A new US-made documentary has produced evidence pointing to the identity of an Israeli soldier who shot dead the Palestinian-American journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022. The documentary, Who Killed Shireen?, concludes that a member of Israeli special forces unit Duvdevan (Cherry) shot Abu Akleh while she was reporting for Al Jazeera in Jenin, on the West Bank. The Israeli government, led by Naftali Bennett at the time, initially tried to cast blame on Palestinian militants for her death, but after a few months admitted that Israeli troops were probably responsible. However, the Israelis never identified the unit or individual responsible, nor did they allow the Biden administration access to them. The new documentary, made by the Zeteo media organisation, sets out not only to identify the soldier responsible for the journalist's death, but also to show the failure of the US government to hold the Israeli military to account. An unnamed Biden administration official said that a US team that investigated the incident came to the conclusion that an Israeli soldier intentionally shot Abu Akleh and should have been able to see that she was a journalist. 'The evidence as it stands, based upon the proximity of the reporters in the road and the soldiers from the Duvdevan units on the street, it was an indication that it was an intentional killing of Shireen Abu Akleh,' the official told the film-makers, with his voice altered to preserve his anonymity. 'Whether or not they knew it was her or not can very well be debated, but they would have absolutely known that it was a media person or a non-combatant at a minimum'. However that initial assessment was rejected and the Biden administration continued to maintain publicly that they believed the killing to be unintentional. Two Israeli soldiers identified the soldier who shot Abu Akleh as Alon Scagio. Scagio was promoted to captain and moved to another unit after the shooting, and was killed in combat in Jenin in June 2024. 'He wasn't happy like, hey – I killed a journalist of course. But he wasn't like eating himself from the inside, thinking about what have I done?' one of his comrades said in a recorded interview about the killing. 'When you [turn] the corner and you have this second to take a decision, to take a shot and you see someone who holds a camera or something like that pointing at you, you don't need more than that to shoot the bullet,' the unnamed Israeli soldier said. When the Biden administration called for changes of the Israel rules of engagement to reduce the chance of journalists being killed in the future, 'we got a very public brush-off,' Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen told the film-makers. Questions to the Scagio family were referred to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which said in a statement: 'Zeteo has decided to publish the name of the IDF soldier who fell during an operational activity, despite the family's request not to publish the name, and even though they were told that there is no definitive determination regarding the identity of the individual responsible for the shooting that caused the journalist's death.' 'The IDF shares in the family's grief and continues to support them,' the statement said, referring to the Scagio family.
