CPJ calls for transparent U.S. investigation into killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

New York, October 28, 2025 — The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) renewed its call for an independent and transparent investigation into Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after a news report suggested the United States watered down its conclusions in an assessment of the circumstances surrounding her death.

Abu Akleh, one of the region’s best-known reporters, was shot and killed while reporting in the West Bank in May 2022. Israel initially denied that its forces killed her, but multiple independent investigations published in the weeks after her death showed Israel was responsible – and that its soldiers would have known that Abu Akleh was a reporter.

In a July 2022 statement, two months after Abu Akleh’s death, the U.S. State Department attributed her killing to “tragic circumstances.” Colonel Steve Gabavics, who worked at the Office of the U.S. Security Coordinator in Jerusalem at the time has now said publicly that he and his colleagues were “flabbergasted” by the government’s decision to avoid calling the killing intentional.

Gabavics, who reviewed intelligence and evidence surrounding the May 2022 shooting, said the material indicated a deliberate attack, citing Israeli military radio communications acknowledging journalists’ presence, the absence of gunfire from the journalists’ direction, and the precision and sequence of the shots that struck Abu Akleh and her colleagues—all of whom were clearly identified as press.

These new claims reinforce long-standing concerns CPJ and many other organizations, including Abu Akleh’s employer Al Jazeera, have raised that she was deliberately targeted while performing her duties as a journalist. Despite extensive documentation and appeals from her family, colleagues, and press freedom groups, accountability remains elusive. The FBI launched an investigation into her death, but has not given any updates on its progress since it was announced in November, 2022.

“The U.S. government owes the public—and Shireen Abu Akleh’s family—more than words of regret,” said CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “It has a responsibility to its citizens. These new disclosures reinforce the need for an independent investigation that finally delivers accountability. Without such accountability, Israeli forces will continue to take journalists’ lives – because they know they can do so without consequence.”

A 2023 CPJ report showed ​​that Abu Akleh’s murder, and the failure of the IDF to hold anyone responsible, was not an isolated event but part of a pattern that appeared designed to evade accountability. Israel has killed more journalists than any other country in the world since 1992, according to CPJ research, including at least 198 journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, of whom 26 are believed to have been deliberately targeted. No one has been held accountable for any of these killings.