Any person or group can file a complaint to the ICC prosecutor for investigation, but the Hague-based court is not obliged to take them on. Israel said it would not cooperate with any external probe into Abu Akleh's death.
ADVERTISEMENTTV network Al Jazeera has submitted a case to the International Criminal Court over the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.The network claims new evidence shows the journalist and her colleagues were directly fired by Israeli forces, a claim that Israel has repeatedly denied.
“My family still doesn’t know who shot the deadly bullet,” Lena Abu Akleh, Shireen’s niece, told reporters during a press conference. The family submitted their own request for an ICC investigation in September.
Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known Palestinian reporter for the Al Jazeera network was shot in the head while covering an Israeli raid in the West Bank in May. One of her colleagues who has present claims Israeli troops fired on them.
However, Israel is not an ICC member and disputes the international criminal court's jurisdiction.
Following international pressure, Israeli defence forces admitted it was likely that one of their soldiers shot the prominent correspondent while she was reporting on a military raid in the West Bank.
The IDF denied the shooting was intentional and declared the case closed.
“No one will investigate (Israeli) soldiers and no one will preach to us about morals in warfare, certainly not Al-Jazeera,” Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement in response to Tuesday’s filing.
Al Jazeera saw the killing as yet another attack on the press freedom of Palestinians. “Palestinian journalists have been targeted for doing their jobs as journalists,” Cameron Doley, who is representing Al Jazeera, told reporters after submitting the complaint to the world’s only permanent court for atrocities crimes.
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