The Israel-Gaza war has taken a severe toll on journalists since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 and Israel declared war on the militant Palestinian group, launching strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

CPJ is investigating all reports of journalists and media workers killed, injured, or missing in the war, which has led to the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

As of December 4, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 63 journalists and media workers were among the more than 16,000 killed since the war began on October 7—with more than 15,500 Palestinian deaths in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 deaths in Israel. The deadliest day of the war for journalist deaths was its first day, October 7, with six journalists killed; the second-deadliest day occurred on November 18, with five killed.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told Reuters and Agence France Press news agencies that it could not guarantee the safety of their journalists operating in the Gaza Strip, after they had sought assurances that their journalists would not be targeted by Israeli strikes, Reuters reported on October 27.

Journalists in Gaza face particularly high risks as they try to cover the conflict during the Israeli ground assault, including devastating Israeli airstrikes, disrupted communications, supply shortages and extensive power outages.

As of December 4:

• 63 journalists and media workers were confirmed dead: 56 Palestinian, 4 Israeli, and 3 Lebanese.
• 11 journalists were reported injured.
• 3 journalists were reported missing.
• 19 journalists were reported arrested.
• Multiple assaults, threats, cyberattacks, censorship, and killings of family members.

CPJ is also investigating numerous unconfirmed reports of other journalists being killed, missing, detained, hurt, or threatened, and of damage to media offices and journalists’ homes.

“CPJ emphasizes that journalists are civilians doing important work during times of crisis and must not be targeted by warring parties,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Journalists across the region are making great sacrifices to cover this heart-breaking conflict. Those in Gaza, in particular, have paid, and continue to pay, an unprecedented toll and face exponential threats. Many have lost colleagues, families, and media facilities, and have fled seeking safety when there is no safe haven or exit.”

The list published here includes names based on information obtained from CPJ’s sources in the region and media reports. It includes all journalists* involved in news-gathering activity. It is unclear whether all of these journalists were covering the conflict at the time of their deaths, but CPJ has included them in our count as we investigate their circumstances. The list is being updated on a regular basis.

Journalists and media workers reported killed, missing, or injured:

KILLED

December 3

Hassan Farajallah

Farajallah, who held a senior position for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV, was killed in an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and the International Federation of Journalists.

Shima El-Gazzar

A Palestinian journalist for Al-Majedat network, El-Gazzar was killed along with her family members in an Israeli airstrike on Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes and the Cairo-based media outlet Darb.

December 1

Abdullah Darwish

A Palestinian cameraman for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, Darwish was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the International Federation of Journalists.

Montaser Al-Sawaf

Al-Sawaf, a Palestinian cameraman for Anadolu Agency, was killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, as confirmed by Anadolu Agency, Middle East Monitor, and the International Federation of Journalists.

Adham Hassouna

Hassouna, a Palestinian freelance journalist and media professor at Gaza and Al-Aqsa universities, was killed, along with several members of his family in an Israeli airstrike in the city of Gaza, as reported by the Ramallah-based Palestinian news network SHFA and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

November 24

Mostafa Bakeer

Bakeer, a Palestinian journalist and cameraperson for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, southern Gaza, according to the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa radio, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the International Federation of Journalists. 

November 23, 2023

Mohamed Mouin Ayyash

Ayyash, a Palestinian journalist and a freelance photographer, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, along with 20 members of his family, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa. 

Democracy Now! ““No One Is Safe in Gaza”: Journalist Akram al-Satarri Reports from Khan Younis Amid Israeli Assault”

November 22, 2023

Mohamed Nabil Al-Zaq

Al-Zaq, a Palestinian journalist and a social media manager for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Shejaiya in northern Gaza, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News, the Ramallah-based news website Wattan TV, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the International Federation of Journalists.   

November 21, 2023

Farah Omar

Omar, a Lebanese reporter for the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen TV channel, was killed by an Israeli strike in the Tayr Harfa area in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel, according to Al-Mayadeen, Al-Jazeera, and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes. She was reporting on escalating hostilities across the Lebanese-Israeli border and gave a live update an hour before her death.

Rabih Al Maamari

Al Maamari, a Lebanese cameraperson for the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen TV channel, was killed by an Israeli strike in the Tayr Harfa area in southern Lebanon, close to the border with Israel, along with his colleague Farah Omar, according to Al-Mayadeen, Al-Jazeera, and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes.

November 20, 2023 

Ayat Khadoura

Khadoura, a Palestinian freelance journalist and podcast presenter, was killed along with an unknown number of family members in an Israeli airstrike on her home in Beit Lahya in northern Gaza, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, the news website Arabi 21, and London-based Al-Ghad TV. Khadoura shared videos on social media about the situation in Gaza, including a November 6 video, which she called “my last message to the world” where she said, “We had big dreams but our dream now is to be killed in one piece so they know who we are.”

Alaa Taher Al-Hassanat

Al-Hassanat, a Palestinian journalist and presenter at AlMajedat Media Network, was killed, along with multiple members of her family, in an Israeli airstrike that hit her house in the Gaza Strip, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, Quds News Network, and the Ramallah-based Palestinian news network SHFA. In 2015, Al-Hassanat wrote an article about the 2014 war on Gaza, in which she detailed what she endured, adding that “our role as journalists is now more important than ever.”

November 19, 2023

Bilal Jadallah

Jadallah, director of Press House-Palestine, a non-profit which supports the development of independent Palestinian media, was killed in his car in Gaza in an Israeli airstrike, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Al Qahera News, and the Cairo-based Youm7.

November 18, 2023

Abdelhalim Awad

A Palestinian media worker and driver for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, Awad was killed in a strike on his home in the Gaza Strip, according to the London-based Al-Ghad TV, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes. Awad had been working full-time since the beginning of the war in Khan Yunis and had left to visit his family last week, his colleague Ziad AlMokayyed told CPJ via messaging app.

Sari Mansour

Mansour, director of the Quds News Network, and his colleague and friend Hassouneh Salim were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, according to the Cairo-based Elwatan news, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Al-Jazeera, and Anadolu Agency.

Hassouneh Salim

Salim, a Palestinian freelance photojournalist, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, along with his colleague and friend Sari Mansour, according to the Jordan-based Roya news, Al-Jazeera, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Mostafa El Sawaf

El Sawaf, a Palestinian writer and analyst who contributed to the local news website MSDR News, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home along with his wife and two of his sons in Shawa Square, Gaza City, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the Cairo-based Youm7.

Amro Salah Abu Hayah

A Palestinian media worker in the broadcast department of the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV channel, Abu Hayah was killed in a strike in Gaza, according to the Jordan-based Roya News and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Mossab Ashour

Ashour, a Palestinian photographer, was killed during an attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip but his death was not reported until November 18, soon after his body was discovered, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, TRT Arabi, and Anadolu Agency.

November 13, 2023

Ahmed Fatima

A photographer for the Egypt-based Al Qahera News TV and a media worker with Press House-Palestine, Fatima was killed in a strike in Gaza, according to Al Qahera News TV, the Egypt-based Ahram Online, the Palestinians Journalists’ Syndicate, and the Amman-based news outlet Roya News. 

Yaacoub Al-Barsh

Al-Barsh, executive director of the local Namaa Radio, was killed after sustaining injuries on November 12 from an Israeli airstrike on his home in northern Gaza, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, the Ramallah-based Palestinian news network SHFA, and the Palestinian press freedom group MADA. 

November 10, 2023

Ahmed Al-Qara

Al-Qara, a photojournalist who worked for Al-Aqsa University and was also a freelancer, was killed in a strike at the entrance of Khuza’a town, east of the southern city of Khan Yunis, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Cairo-based Al-Dostor newspaper.

November 7, 2023

Yahya Abu Manih

A journalist with Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa radio channel, Abu Manih was killed in a strike in the Gaza strip, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News, Al-Jazeera, and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes. 

Mohamed Abu Hassira

Abu Hassira, a journalist for the Palestinian Authority-run Wafa news agency, was killed in a strike on his home in Gaza along with 42 family members, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, the London-based news website The New Arab, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate. 

November 5, 2023

Mohamed Al Jaja

Al Jaja was a media worker and the organizational development consultant at Press House-Palestine, which owns Sawa news agency in Gaza and promotes press freedom and independent media. He was killed in a strike on his home along with his wife and two daughters in the Al-Naser neighborhood in northern Gaza, according to the London-based news website The New Arab, the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

November 2, 2023

Mohamad Al-Bayyari

Al-Bayyari, a Palestinian journalist with the Hamas affiliated Al-Aqsa TV channel, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and the International Federation of Journalists. 

Mohammed Abu Hatab

A journalist and correspondent for the Palestinian Authority-funded broadcaster Palestine TV, Abu Hatab was killed along with 11 members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa and the Amman-based news outlet Roya News.

November 1, 2023

Majd Fadl Arandas

A member of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate who worked for the news website Al-Jamaheer, Arandas was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes. 

Iyad Matar

Matar, a journalist working for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed along with his mother in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to the Amman-based news outlet Roya News and the local channel Palestine Today.

October 31, 2023

Imad Al-Wahidi

A media worker and administrator for the Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV channel, Al-Wahidi was killed with his family members in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement issued by the channel, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Majed Kashko

Kashko, a media worker and the office director of the Palestinian Authority-run Palestine TV channel, was killed with his family members in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to a statement issued by the channel, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

October 30, 2023

Nazmi Al-Nadim

Al-Nadim, a deputy director of finance and administration for Palestine TV, was killed with members of his family in a strike on his home in Zeitoun area, eastern Gaza, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa and Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency.

October 27, 2023

Yasser Abu Namous

Palestinian journalist Yasser Abu Namous of Al-Sahel media organization was killed in a strike on his family home in Khan Yunis, Gaza, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, Al-Jazeera, and the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds network.

October 26, 2023

Duaa Sharaf

Palestinian journalist Sharaf, host for the Hamas-affiliated Radio Al-Aqsa, was killed with her child in a strike on her home in the Yarmouk neighborhood in Gaza, according to Anadolu Agency and Middle East Monitor. 

October 25, 2023

Jamal Al-Faqaawi

Al-Faqaawi, a Palestinian journalist for the Islamic Jihad-affiliated Mithaq Media Foundation, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, according to Al-Jazeera,  the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, the Palestinian News Network, and the International Federation of Journalists. 

Saed Al-Halabi

Al-Halabi, a journalist for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, the Palestinian press freedom group MADA, and Al-Jazeera.

Ahmed Abu Mhadi

A journalist for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, Mhadi was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and Youm7.  

Salma Mkhaimer

Mkhaimer, a freelance journalist, was killed alongside her child in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the independent Egyptian online newspaper Mada Masr.

October 23, 2023

Mohammed Imad Labad

A journalist for the Al Resalah news website, Labad was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in Gaza City, according to RT Arabic and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

October 22, 2023

Roshdi Sarraj

A journalist and co-founder of Ain Media, a Palestinian company specializing in professional media services, Sarraj was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa and Sky News. 

October 20, 2023

Roee Idan

On October 20, Israeli journalist Idan was declared dead after his body was recovered, according to The Times of Israel and the International Federation of Journalists. Idan, a photographer for the Israeli newspaper Ynet, was initially reported missing when his wife and daughter were killed in a Hamas attack on October 7 on Kibbutz Kfar Aza. CPJ confirmed that he was working on the day of the attack.

Mohammed Ali

A journalist from Al-Shabab Radio (Youth Radio), Ali was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Cairo-based Al-Dostor newspaper. 

October 19, 2023

Khalil Abu Aathra

A videographer for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, Abu Aathra was killed along with his brother in an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, as reported by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Amman-based news outlet Roya News.

October 18, 2023

Sameeh Al-Nady

A journalist and director for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, Al-Nady was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian press agency Safa.

October 17, 2023

Mohammad Balousha

Balousha, a journalist and the administrative and financial manager of the local media channel “Palestine Today” office in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Saftawi neighborhood in northern Gaza, reported Anadolu Agency and The Guardian.

Issam Bhar

Bhar, a journalist for the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip, according to TRT Arabia and the Cairo-based Arabic newspaper Shorouk News.

October 16, 2023

Abdulhadi Habib

A journalist who worked for Al-Manara News Agency and HQ News Agency, Habib was killed along with several of his family members when a missile strike hit his house near the Zeitoun neighborhood, south of Gaza City, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the independent Palestinian news organization International Middle East Media Center.

October 14, 2023

Yousef Maher Dawas

Dawas, a contributing writer for Palestine Chronicle and a writer for We Are Not Numbers (WANN), a youth-led Palestinian nonprofit project, was killed in an Israeli missile strike on his family’s home in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, according to WANN and Palestine Chronicle.

October 13, 2023

Salam Mema

The death of Mema, a freelance journalist, was confirmed on this date. Mema held the position of head of the Women Journalists Committee at the Palestinian Media Assembly, an organization committed to advancing media work for Palestinian journalists. Her body was recovered from the rubble three days after her home in the Jabalia refugee camp, situated in the northern Gaza Strip, was hit by an Israeli airstrike on October 10, according to the  Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

Husam Mubarak

Mubarak, a journalist for the Hamas-affiliated Al Aqsa Radio, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Beirut-based press freedom group Skeyes and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Issam Abdallah

Abdallah, a Beirut-based videographer for the Reuters news agency, was killed near the Lebanon border by shelling coming from the direction of Israel. Abdallah and several other journalists were covering the back-and-forth shelling near Alma Al-Shaab in southern Lebanon between Israeli forces and Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group.

October 12, 2023

Ahmed Shehab

A journalist for Sowt Al-Asra Radio (Radio Voice of the Prisoners), Shehab, along with his wife and three children, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on his house in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Palestinian press freedom group MADA, and the London-based news website The New Arab.

October 11, 2023

Mohamed Fayez Abu Matar

Abu Matar, a freelance photojournalist, was killed during an Israeli airstrike in Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

October 10, 2023

Saeed al-Taweel

Al-Taweel, editor-in-chief of the Al-Khamsa News website, was killed when Israeli warplanes struck an area housing several media outlets in Gaza City’s Rimal district, according to the U.K.-based newspaper, The Independent, Al Jazeera, and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

Mohammed Sobh

Sobh, a photographer from Khabar news agency, was killed when Israeli warplanes struck an area housing several media outlets in Gaza City’s Rimal district, according to the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent, Al Jazeera, and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

Hisham Alnwajha

Alnwajha, a journalist with Khabar news agency, was injured when Israeli warplanes struck an area housing several media outlets in Gaza City’s Rimal district, according to the U.K.-based newspaper The Independent, Al Jazeera, and the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa.

He died of his injuries later that day, according to the Palestinian press freedom group MADA, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and Palestinian news website AlWatan Voice.

October 8, 2023

Assaad Shamlakh

Shamlakh, a freelance journalist, was killed along with nine members of his family in an Israeli airstrike on their home in Sheikh Ijlin, a neighborhood in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Beirut-based advocacy group The Legal Agenda and BBC Arabic.

October 7, 2023

Shai Regev

Regev, who served as an editor for TMI, the gossip and entertainment news section of the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Maariv, was killed during a Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel. Regev’s death was confirmed after she was reported missing for six days, according to Maariv and The Times of Israel.

Ayelet Arnin

A 22-year-old news editor with the Israel Broadcasting Corporation Kan, Arnin was killed during a Hamas attack on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel, according to The Times of Israel and The Wrap entertainment website.

Yaniv Zohar

Zohar, an Israeli photographer working for the Hebrew-language daily newspaper Israel Hayom, was killed during a Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel, along with his wife and two daughters, according to Israel Hayom and Israel National News. Israel Hayom’s editor-in-chief Omer Lachmanovitch told CPJ that Zohar was working on that day.

Mohammad Al-Salhi

Al-Salhi, a photojournalist working for the Fourth Authority news agency, was shot dead near a Palestinian refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, according to the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency Wafa, and the Journalist Support Committee (JSC), a nonprofit which promotes the rights of the media in the Middle East.

Mohammad Jarghoun

Jarghoun, a journalist with Smart Media, was shot while reporting on the conflict in an area to the east of Rafah city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the BBC and UNESCO.

Ibrahim Mohammad Lafi

Lafi, a photographer for Ain Media, was shot and killed at the Gaza Strip’s Erez Crossing into Israel, according to the Palestinian press freedom group MADA, the Beirut-based press freedom group SKeyes, and Al-Jazeera.

INJURED

November 18, 2023

Mohammed El Sawwaf

Mohammed El Sawwaf, an award-winning Palestinian film producer and director who founded the Gaza-based Alef Multimedia production company, was injured in an Israeli airstrike on his home in Shawa Square in Gaza City. The airstrike killed 30 members of his family, including his mother and his father, Mostafa Al Sawaf, who was also a journalist, according to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, Anadolu Agency, and TRT Arabic.

Montaser El Sawaf

Montaser El Sawaf, a Palestinian freelance photographer contributing to Anadolu Agency, was injured in the same Israeli airstrike that injured his brother, Mohammed El Sawwaf and killed their parents and 28 other family members, according to the Anadolu Agency, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and TRT Arabic.

November 13, 2023

Issam Mawassi

Al-Jazeera videographer Mawassi was injured after two Israeli missiles struck near journalists in Yaroun in southern Lebanon covering clashes, which also resulted in damage to the journalists’ cars in the area, according to multiple media reports, some of which show the journalists live on air the minute the second missile hit the area. CPJ reached out to Mawassi via a messaging app but didn’t receive any response.

October 13, 2023

Thaer Al-Sudani

Al-Sudani, a journalist for Reuters, was injured in the same attack that killed Abdallah near the border in southern Lebanon, Reuters said.

Maher Nazeh

Nazeh, a journalist for Reuters, was also injured in the same southern Lebanon attack.

Elie Brakhya

Brakhya, an Al-Jazeera TV staff member, was injured as well in the southern Lebanon shelling, Al-Jazeera TV said.

Carmen Joukhadar

Joukhadar, an Al-Jazeera TV reporter, was also wounded in the southern Lebanon attack.

Christina Assi

Assi, a photographer for the French news agency Agence France-Press (AFP), was injured in that same attack on southern Lebanon, according to AFP and France 24.

Dylan Collins

Dylan Collins, a video journalist for AFP, was also injured in the southern Lebanon shelling.

October 7, 2023

Ibrahim Qanan

Qanan, a correspondent for Al-Ghad channel, was injured by shrapnel in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, according to MADA and JSC.

Firas Lutfi

Police assaulted Lufti, a correspondent with privately owned Sky News Arabia,  along with other Sky News journalists in the southern city of Ashkelon, according to members of the television crew. Lutfi said Israeli police aimed rifles at his head, forced him to remove his clothes, confiscated the team’s phones, and made them leave the area under police escort.

MISSING

October 7, 2023

Oded Lifschitz

Lifschitz, a lifelong Israeli journalist who wrote for Al-Hamishmar for many years and was also a Haaretz contributor, was reported missing from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel. Oded’s wife was one of the two hostages released by Hamas on October 24, 2023, according to The Times of Israel and The Telegraph.

Nidal Al-Wahidi

A Palestinian photographer from the Al-Najah channel, Al-Wahidi was reported missing by MADA. Later, Al-Wahidi’s family informed the media that the journalist had been detained by the Israeli army.

Haitham Abdelwahid

A Palestinian photographer from the Ain Media agency, Abdelwahid was also reported missing by MADA.

Clarifications and corrections:

*CPJ’s research and documentation covers all journalists, defined as individuals involved in news-gathering activity. This definition covers those working for a broad range of publicly and privately funded news outlets, as well as freelancers. CPJ does not support journalists engaged in breaking the law. In the cases we have documented, multiple sources have found no evidence to date that any journalist was engaged in militant activity. 

This text has been updated to correct the spelling of Alma Al-Shaab in Issam Abdallah’s October 13, 2023 entry, and of the outlet Palestine TV in Abu Hatab’s November 2, 2023 entry.

Committee to Protect Journalists

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. NB title is that of Informed Comment, not CPJ.

Ahead of the first anniversary of Abu Akleh’s death, CPJ revisited these 20 cases and found a pattern of Israeli response that appears designed to evade responsibility. Israel has failed to fully investigate these killings, launching deeper probes only when the victim is foreign or has a high-profile employer. Even then, inquiries drag on for months or years and end with the exoneration of those who opened fire. The military consistently says its troops feared for their safety or came under attack and declines to revisit its rules of engagement. In at least 13 cases, witness testimonies and independent reports were discounted. Conflicts of interest in the chain of command are overlooked. The military’s probes are classified and the army makes no evidence for its conclusions public. In some cases, Israel labels journalists as terrorists, or appears not to have looked into journalist killings at all. The result is always the same — no one is held responsible.

Israel’s efforts to examine its soldiers’ actions, particularly when it comes to Palestinian journalists killed, amount to less of a serious inquiry than a “theater of investigation,” said Hagai El-Ad, the executive director of Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. 

“They want to make it look credible. They go through the motions, things take a lot of time, a lot of paperwork, a lot of back and forth,” he told CPJ. “But the bottom line after all this maneuvering is almost blanket impunity for security forces when using lethal force against Palestinians that is not justified.”

Israel’s army is responsible for 80% of journalist and media worker killings in the Palestinian territories in CPJ’s database. The other 20% — five cases — died due to different causes. Two Palestinians were shot by gunmen in Palestinian Presidential Guard uniforms in 2007; one Palestinian was killed in what was likely an accidental explosion at a Palestinian National Authority security post in 2000. And in 2014, an Italian foreign correspondent and his Palestinian translator died on assignment while following a team of Palestinian engineers neutralizing unexploded Israeli missiles when one detonated. 

CPJ’s research spans some of the most violent and repressive years of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the start of the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada, in 2000, to repeated Israeli operations against militants. All deaths took place in the West Bank, territory under Israeli military occupation, or in Gaza, a coastal strip under Israeli military blockade. No journalist was killed within Israel’s internationally recognized borders. 

Deaths are just one part of the story. Many journalists have been injured, and in 2021 the military bombed Gaza buildings that housed offices of more than a dozen local and international media outlets, including The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera. 

Journalists are civilians under international law, and as such militaries must take steps to safeguard them during hostilities. Yet while international law forbids the targeting of civilians, it also acknowledges that such deaths cannot be fully avoided, and doesn’t require armies to investigate themselves every time they occur. Indeed, Israel never announced probes into at least five — a full quarter — of the IDF killings in CPJ’s database. “That doesn’t mean there aren’t situations when investigations are appropriate and necessary to see if someone made an unreasonable judgment related to the use of force,” said Geoffrey Corn, a military law expert at Texas Tech University and a fellow at the pro-Israel nonprofit Jewish Institute for National Security of America. 

Israel’s current military investigative system was born out of the 2010 Turkel Commission, a government commission established in part to ensure Israel was investigating its military actions in accordance with international law. The commission was set up amid concerns that Israeli officials could be arrested abroad for alleged war crimes. In order to avoid the International Criminal Court, which, under the ICC’s principle of complementarity, can exercise jurisdiction where national legal systems are unable or unwilling to act,  Israel needed to bolster its institutions to prove it could handle such allegations at home. 

Since 2014, the military has opened “fact-finding assessments” into “exceptional incidents” in which the army needs more information to determine “whether there exists reasonable grounds for suspicion of a violation of the law which would justify a criminal investigation,” according to the IDF. Once the assessment is complete, it is delivered to the Military Advocate General, who decides whether to pursue a criminal track in the case. The Israeli military has opened fact-finding assessments into the killings of five journalists, including Abu Akleh, since 2014. It also opened a fact-finding assessment into a large-scale bombardment which killed three other journalists during Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. (Prior to 2014 it opened preliminary probes or conducted very basic checks into other journalist deaths.) 

Human rights groups, and Israel’s own state comptroller, have raised concerns about the independence and slow pace of these totally confidential assessments, which can drag on for months or years, by which time witnesses’ memories fade, evidence may disappear or be destroyed, and soldiers involved can coordinate testimonies. In the nine years that this assessment system has been in place, the Military Advocate General has never opened a criminal probe into a journalist killing. (Israel did open one military criminal investigation into the 2003 killing of British journalist James Miller, but closed it without putting the soldier on trial.) Israel has rebuffed claims that its investigative systems are flawed; the IDF says Israel is a “democratic country committed to the rule of law.” 

Investigations into military activity are controversial in Israel, where conscription is mandatory and soldiers are broadly seen as the nation’s sons and daughters. In 2017, when Israeli soldier Elor Azaria stood trial for the extrajudicial killing of an incapacitated Palestinian assailant, mass protests erupted. Azaria’s charge was downgraded from murder to manslaughter and he was released nine months into his reduced 14-month sentence. 

Shlomo Zipori, a former chief defense attorney of the Military Advocate General’s unit, who represents soldiers in criminal cases, told CPJ that investigations must be weighed against military objectives, as soldiers may begin to overthink their moves in the field if they fear being tried. “I represented a soldier who was still serving in the army while under criminal investigation for killing a Palestinian and injuring another,” he said. “Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at him and he didn’t respond because he was so traumatized by the interrogations he went through in the hands of the military police and he didn’t want to go through them again.” Zipori is also concerned for soldiers’ futures. “If you convict him, you’ll ruin his life,” he said. “There are more than 50 professions he can’t do in civilian life for 17 years if he’s convicted.”

Corn told CPJ that launching a criminal investigation into every killing, even when evidence of criminality is “murky” or insufficient, could impact soldiers’ abilities to do their jobs in the field. Soldiers will assume that every civilian injury will subject them to investigation. “Conversely, when the evidence credibly suggests a violation of law or policy and you don’t do anything about it, you are incentivizing other people to break the rules,” he said. 

Time and again after a journalist killing, Israel affirms its commitment to the rights of journalists. “The IDF sees great importance in preserving the freedom of the press and the professional work of journalists,” the army said in an emailed statement to CPJ. 

Israeli officials often repeat the assertion that Israel “does not target journalists.” But Israeli authorities need not prove that a killing was intentional in order to open a criminal case into the conduct of a soldier or the soldier’s superiors. There are many other lesser crimes in the country’s military law that could apply, including the Israeli equivalent of involuntary manslaughter. Israel has never put a soldier on trial for an intentional or unintentional killing of a journalist. 

“The state has obligations that it might or might not be following, but I think also a democracy can demand more than the legal minimum,” said Claire Simmons, co-author of recent guidelines for states on investigating violations of international law published by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Geneva Academy. Citizens in democracies can send a strong message to their governments, she said: “‘We are demanding that you be accountable to the actions that you are being involved in, and that you do a better job of protecting lives in armed conflict.’” 

So far, the lack of accountability has created a more dangerous reporting environment for local and foreign reporters alike. “Many reporters covering similar raids and tensions — which have risen markedly since Shireen’s killing — are afraid of being shot,” said Guillaume Lavallée, chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel, in a statement to CPJ. “If a reporter with an American passport can be killed without legal consequence, journalists fear a similar fate could easily await them in the future. That feeling of vulnerability is particularly strong among our Palestinian colleagues. Some of them fear that they might even be targeted.”

CPJ sent multiple requests to the IDF’s press office to interview military prosecutors and officials but the military refused to meet with CPJ for an on-the-record interview.  Below are CPJ’s key findings about IDF killings of journalists: 

Israel discounts evidence and witness claims

Abu Akleh’s story is a case study in how Israel often discounts evidence reported in the news and elsewhere. Early on in its probe, the IDF released initial findings raising the possibility that a soldier may have killed the journalist when responding to Palestinian gunfire. But news organizations quickly poked holes in this narrative.  

The New York Times said it reviewed evidence that “contradicted Israeli claims that, if a soldier had mistakenly killed her, it was because he had been shooting at a Palestinian gunman.” The Associated Press noted that the “only confirmed presence of Palestinian militants was on the other side of the [Israeli military] convoy, some 300 meters… away, mostly separated from Abu Akleh by buildings and walls. Israel says at least one militant was between the convoy and the journalists, but it has not provided any evidence or indicated the shooter’s location.” Additional investigations by The Washington Post, CNN, and research collective Bellingcat showed a lack of militant activity in the area at the time of the shooting.  

These investigations were all published months before the IDF issued its final statement. And while the army claimed that it reviewed “materials from foreign media organizations,” it appeared to totally discount those findings. According to the military, there was a “high possibility” Abu Akleh was “accidentally hit by IDF gunfire fired toward suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire in which life-threatening, widespread and indiscriminate shots were fired toward IDF soldiers.” The IDF did not rule out the possibility that she was killed by a Palestinian gunman. 

The IDF also said that “at no point was Ms. Shireen Abu Akleh identified and at no point was there any intentional gunfire carried out by IDF soldiers in a manner intended to harm the journalist.” But weeks after the final IDF statement, Forensic Architecture and Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq published a joint report reconstructing the circumstances of the killing.

“According to both the digital and optical reconstructions of the shooter’s vision, the journalists’ press vests would have been clearly visible throughout the incident,” Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq found. The IDF never responded publicly to the groups’ report, which claimed that the military targeted the journalist. 

The Foreign Press Association in Israel also questioned why a soldier with what the IDF said was limited visibility fired toward clearly identifiable journalists without firing a warning shot. “If this is normal operating procedure, how can the army fulfill its stated pledge to protect journalists and respect freedom of the press?” The association demanded Israel to publish the full findings of its probe, which it never did.

Israel has discounted evidence in other high profile cases. In 2002, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello, who was on assignment for Corriere della Sera, stepped out of a building in Ramallah to take a photograph of a tank some 200 yards away and was shot six times. “The barrage undoubtedly came from the road, where there was not a soul, apart from the Israeli tank,” said another journalist at the scene, Amedeo Ricucci, in an article for Italian newspaper Vita. An Israeli Government Press Office official told the Boston Globe, “From that distance, I’m sure it looked like the guy was getting into a firing position and was about to shoot.” However, the IDF’s official position was that it didn’t kill the journalist. The IDF later said that there was “no evidence and no knowledge of an [army] force that fired in the direction of the photographer.” 

In 2003, when Associated Press Television News (APTN) journalist Nazih Darwazeh was killed filming clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli troops, The Associated Press commissioned an independent investigation that “concluded that the fatal bullet could only have come from the position where the Israeli soldier was standing,” according to AP Vice President John Daniszewski. 

Daniszewski told CPJ in an email that Nigel Baker, then the content director of APTN, flew to Israel and presented the investigation to an Israeli officer, who suggested that the IDF conduct its own probe, but “AP never heard results of such an investigation or whether one was undertaken at all.”

A 2003 Reporters Without Borders report found the IDF did make some cursory attempts at looking into the killing, but that other journalists at the scene were only interviewed “informally.” One was summoned to meet with an army official seemingly in order to calm tensions. 

“AP was and is outraged by this shooting,” Daniszewski said. 

Israeli forces have failed to respect press insignia

Like Abu Akleh, the majority of the 20 journalists killed — at least 13 — were clearly identified as members of the media or were inside vehicles with press insignia at the time of their deaths. (All but one of the 20 journalists, who was home when his apartment was bombed, was killed on assignment.) But not only did journalists’ efforts to identify themselves fail to protect them, at times officials have cast suspicion on journalists because of their apparel. 

In April 2008, Reuters camera operator Fadel Shana, for example, was wearing blue body armor marked “PRESS” and was standing next to a vehicle with the words “TV” and “PRESS” when a tank fired a dart-scattering shell above his head. His chest and legs were pierced in multiple places, killing him. “The markings on Fadel Shana’s vehicle showed clearly and unambiguously that he was a professional journalist doing his duty,” said then-Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, who demanded an Israeli inquiry into the killing.

But Avichai Mandelblit, who was then Military Advocate General, had a different interpretation of Shana’s press insignia. He wrote to Reuters four months later that Shana’s body armor was “common to Palestinian terrorists” and that he had placed a threatening “black object” — a camera — on a tripod. These were two of the several reasons he told Reuters that the soldier’s decision to open fire on Shana was “sound.” 

Shana’s brother, Mohammed Shana, told CPJ that he never received any answers, or any sort of apology, from the Israeli military. “They shot him because they didn’t want him to cover what was happening in that area.” A Reuters spokesperson told CPJ that the company remains “deeply saddened by the loss of our colleague Fadel Shana.” 

Ten years after Shana’s death, in April 2018, then-Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman was even more explicit with his attempted justification for an IDF sniper’s shooting of Gaza filmmaker Yaser Murtaja, who wore a helmet and a vest marked “PRESS.” “We have seen dozens of cases of Hamas activists [who] were disguised as medics and journalists,” said Liberman, referring to calls for investigation as a “march of folly,” according to The Jerusalem Post. 

Murtaja was covering the Great March of Return, a monthslong protest in which Palestinian demonstrators — some of whom hurled Molotov cocktails, rocks, and burning tires at Israeli troops — demanded to return to their historic homelands inside Israel and the lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israeli soldiers killed hundreds of Palestinians, including Murtaja and photojournalist Ahmed Abu Hussein, also in a press vest. Dozens of journalists were injured, leading a 2019 U.N. inquiry to find “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot journalists intentionally.” 

“It was very obvious we were being targeted,” said Yasser Qudih, a freelance photojournalist in Gaza, who suffered life-threatening injuries after an Israeli sniper shot him in the abdomen while he was covering the Great March of Return in a press vest. Qudih believes his fellow reporters were diligent about wearing press apparel — and that this may have undermined their safety. “There was a large number of journalists and the Israeli government and Israeli army were trying to keep them away,” he said. “The Israeli army was directly targeting the journalists’ locations.” 

Israeli officials respond by pushing false narratives

Immediately after a journalist is killed by security forces, Israeli officials often push out a counternarrative to media reporting. In Abu Akleh’s case, officials began to blame the other side even as news reports cited witnesses and the Palestinian health ministry saying she was killed by Israeli troops. “Palestinian terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit” Abu Akleh, the Israeli Foreign Ministry tweeted hours after her killing, along with a video of militants that Israeli human rights group B’Tselem found was taken improbably far from the scene of Abu Akleh’s death. Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav told Israel’s Army Radio that Abu Akleh “likely” died by Palestinian fire. He seemed to implicate the journalists in the violence: “They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so,” he said on the radio, before adding that the journalists were “just doing their work.” 

By the evening, Israeli officials began to walk back these statements, with then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz promising that Israel would transparently investigate her death. Yet the body tasked with the preliminary probe was overseen by Meni Liberty, a member of the chain of command of the unit operating in Jenin that day. Liberty commands the IDF’s Oz Brigade, which includes the elite Duvdevan unit. The Israeli army identified that unit, known for its undercover work in the Palestinian territories, as a possible source of the fire that killed Abu Akleh, according to Haaretz.

In the case of Murtaja, the photographer killed by Israeli fire in 2018, one Israeli official spent weeks trying to discredit the journalist. Then-Defense Minister Liberman called Murtaja “a member of the military arm of Hamas who holds a rank parallel to that of captain, who was active in Hamas for many years” — a claim repeated on Twitter by two spokespeople for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But Liberman never provided evidence and The Washington Post revealed that Murtaja had been vetted by the U.S. government to receive a U.S. Agency for International Development grant to support his production company, Ain Media. Liberman also claimed that Murtaja had used a drone over Israeli soldiers when a video showed him with a handheld camera stabilizer. (The Israeli army told Raf Sanchez, then a reporter for British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, that it had no knowledge of Murtaja working for Hamas.) 

Journalists are accused of terrorism

Murtaja isn’t the only journalist whom Israel accused of militant activity. In one notable case, the army killed journalists affiliated with a Hamas-run outlet, but never explained why it considered them legitimate military targets. The IDF said Hussam Salama and Mahmoud al-Kumi, camera operators for Al-Aqsa TV, were “Hamas operatives” but a Human Rights Watch investigation found no proof that the two were militants, noting that Hamas did not publish their names in its list of fighters killed. After CPJ called for  evidence to justify the attack, the spokesperson for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., responded two months later with a letter accusing Al-Aqsa TV of “glorifying death and advocating violence and murder.” The letter did not say why the two did not deserve the civilian protections afforded to journalists regardless of their perspective. 

In another case, the IDF said that Hamid Shihab, a driver for the Gaza-based press agency Media 24, was transporting weapons in a car marked “TV” when he was killed in an IDF air strike in 2014. The IDF again provided no evidence, saying that “in light of the military use made of the vehicle for the purposes of transporting weaponry, the marking of the vehicle did not alter the lawfulness of the strike.” 

Shihab’s brother, Ahmed Shihab, told CPJ this year that the journalist had “no relationship to any Palestinian parties.” He said that the journalist was taking time off to prepare for his wedding when Media 24 called him to pitch in with coverage of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge. After three days of work, he visited his parents for just an hour during Ramadan; after he left the house, he drove to a colleague’s home and was killed. 

In yet another case, in 2004, the military told CPJ that Mohamed Abu Halima, who was a student journalist for a radio station at Nablus’ An-Najah National University, had opened fire on Israeli forces, leading them to return fire. But Abu Halima’s producer said that he was on the phone with the journalist moments before he was shot and that Abu Halima had been simply describing the scene around him. 

Israel opens probes amid international pressure

The degree to which Israel investigates, or claims to investigate, journalist killings appears to be related to external pressure. Journalists with foreign passports — like Abu Akleh, who had U.S. citizenship — received a high degree of international attention before the army began probes. Israeli officials appear less likely to investigate the killings of local Palestinian journalists, save for those with strong international connections. But there’s a limit to what international pressure can achieve.

In the case of British journalist James Miller, Israel faced the threat of a British request for the extradition of its soldiers and strained diplomatic tension with the British government. In 2003, Miller was shot in the neck by a soldier inside an armored personnel carrier in the Gaza Strip, but in 2005 the army absolved its troops. After a British inquest jury found in 2006 that Miller had been murdered, then-British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith wrote Israeli officials a letter, giving them a deadline to initiate legal proceedings against the soldiers involved, or they would be tried for war crimes in England, Haaretz reported. In 2009, Israel paid approximately 1.5 million pounds (US$2.2 million) in compensation to Miller’s family. After the Israeli payment, the British Ministry of Justice said it would not pursue legal claims or extradition, according to Haaretz.

The Israeli military, which never admitted responsibility in Miller’s death, initially claimed that its troops returned fire after being fired upon with rocket-propelled grenades. In video of the incident, a shot is fired, after which a member of Miller’s crew shouts, “We are British journalists.” A second shot is fired, and appears to hit Miller. The case was investigated by the Israeli military police, but then-Military Advocate General Mandelblit closed it after deciding there wasn’t enough evidence to try the soldier. (The soldier was also acquitted of improper use of weapons in a separate disciplinary hearing.) 

The army said the investigation was “unprecedented in scope” and included ballistics tests, analysis of satellite photographs, and polygraph tests for those involved. However, an internal Israeli army report leaked to The Observer revealed that evidence was tampered with, army surveillance video tapes that may have filmed the killing had disappeared, and that soldiers were overheard “lying.” The report said officers assumed soldiers told the truth, and then explained away inconsistencies in their testimonies because “they were confused because of the fighting.”  

“This investigation was an unbelievable fuckup and everywhere we looked it was a whitewash by the army,” Michael Sfard, a lawyer for the Miller family in Israel, told CPJ. “There was no intention whatsoever to get to the bottom of what happened there. And only because the victim had British nationality and strong journalistic entities behind him, the Ministry of Defense went as far as to meet with us, to talk with us, to negotiate with us.”

Officials appear to clear soldiers while probes are ongoing

Israeli officials, including those tasked with investigating killings, often make public statements exonerating soldiers before probes are complete. In Abu Akleh’s case, Yair Lapid, a former journalist who was then Israeli foreign minister, went on a press offensive, writing in The Wall Street Journal that accusations that Israel had targeted the journalist were “Palestinian propaganda.” His op-ed ran nearly three months before the IDF released a statement concluding no “suspicion of a criminal offense.”

Similarly, three months before the army completed its probe into the killing of Reuters’ Shana in 2008, an IDF spokesperson said soldiers “acted according to their orders.” “We can say for sure that the soldiers weren’t able to detect that it was a member of the press. The IDF has no intention of targeting press people,” the spokesperson said. Then-Military Advocate General Mandelblit later determined the killing was “sound” in part because of unrelated threats facing soldiers that day. 

According to El-Ad of B’Tselem, a soldier’s professed fears can be enough to sway military examiners. “Generally speaking, many soldiers realize that all they need to say is that they felt threatened and so they opened fire,” he told CPJ. “And when a soldier says that then it’s almost guaranteed to be the end of the story, case closed.”

In at least one case, Israeli officials launched a probe with the explicit goal of exoneration. The IDF’s probe into several 2018 Gaza deaths, including Murtaja’s, would “work to back the troops,” an unnamed IDF officer told Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “IDF officials stressed that the panel was formed to help IDF soldiers avoid prosecution in the International Criminal Court at The Hague and should not be interpreted to mean that their actions were in some way unwarranted,” the newspaper said. 

Inquiries are slow and not transparent

The Israeli military often takes months or years to investigate killings and is slow to respond to groups that petition for answers. The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights asked the Israeli military to investigate Murtaja’s death six days after he was killed, according to Iyad Alami, head of PCHR’s legal unit. In an email to CPJ, Alami said the army asked the group for medical reports and eyewitness statements, which the group provided. Nearly two years later, the army responded asking for the names of witnesses who were prepared to testify. PCHR facilitated those testimonies and responded to other requests, but its efforts then ran aground. In October 2021 it asked the army for the results of its probe. It never heard back. 

Another Gaza-based organization, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, filed a request for the army to investigate photographer Abu Hussein’s killing the day after he died from a gunshot wound, two weeks after an Israeli soldier shot him in April 2018. Mervat Al Nahal, the director of the group’s legal aid unit, told CPJ that the military confirmed it received the request but never asked to interview witnesses. Two years later, the Israeli army informed the organization that it closed the case because there was no criminal intent by the soldiers, Al Nahal said. 

When CPJ asked the IDF for the results of its probes into the deaths of Abu Hussein and Murtaja — which occurred within weeks of each other — it received identically worded answers that the journalists were “allegedly present at the scene of violent riots” and “no suspicion was found which would justify the opening of a criminal investigation.”

CPJ asked the IDF for the full probes into the deaths of Abu Hussein and Murtaja and other journalists on CPJ’s list, but the IDF did not provide them. Nor did it answer CPJ’s question about why the army keeps these probes confidential.

In some cases, families never learn what happened beyond what is reported in the press. Abu Hussein’s mother, Raja Abu Hussein, said the Israeli army never contacted her about its probe. “The typical answer the Israeli army gives when it kills civilians is that the army did nothing wrong,” she said, adding that she doesn’t trust the army to investigate itself. 

“I wish I could meet the guy who killed my son,” she told CPJ. “I would ask him, ‘Why, why did you target my son?’ I think he won’t have an answer. He is a sniper, he kills.”

IDF killings undermine independent reporting

The IDF killings of journalists have heightened safety concerns for Palestinian and foreign journalists. Gaza journalist Qudih said that Murtaja’s 2018 killing “created fear in the heart of us all,” as journalists’ families begged them to stop their reporting on the Great March of Return protests because of widespread sniper fire. 

Those concerns escalated after Abu Akleh’s killing. “I’m not a person who is scared, but I have a 5-year-old daughter who has been telling me she doesn’t want me to go to work so that I won’t be killed like Shireen was in Jenin,” said Hafez Abu Sabra, a Palestinian reporter for Jordan’s Roya TV. “Everyone is scared now especially after what happened to Shireen. Before, they were shooting stun grenades and rubber bullets at us. But now, it’s live bullets and you can lose your life,” he said. 

“This is really affecting our coverage,” said Abu Sabra. “We try to avoid places where there are clashes. We try to stay close to ambulances and hospitals and be away from the demonstrators. So, we are much farther away from the event. People are using footage taken by locals in the area and discovering the news in that way.”

Abu Akleh’s killing has also changed the calculus for some foreign news organizations working with local journalists. “Especially after what occurred with Shireen we have taken a much more cautious approach,” said a security adviser for an international news outlet. “If we are dealing with a local national who is doing the primary reporting, if we know of any operations happening in the area we just don’t take chances with these things anymore.” The adviser declined to be named out of concern that the outlet’s journalists would be denied entry to Israel and the Palestinian territories in the future.  

The adviser said that in recent years, his news organization has recategorized Israel and the Palestinian territories from a “moderate risk” location to a “high risk” location due to harassment by security forces as well as by settlers and other ultranationalist Israelis that yielded a “very muted response from authorities.” Crews on the ground must now follow stricter communication and safety protocols. They also avoid travel between Israeli and Palestinian areas at night in part out of fears that Palestinians may mistake them for settlers and attack them. 

The security adviser pointed to recent access issues. Palestinian journalists have been stopped at West Bank checkpoints and told they cannot proceed to the site of military operations “for your own protection.” Nidal Shtayyeh, a Palestinian photographer for the Chinese news agency Xinhua who was previously shot in the eye while reporting, said these restrictions intensified after Abu Akleh’s killing. “So, there’s no freedom of coverage.” The lack of independent reporting works in the government’s favor, said the security adviser. “They are the only one with a narrative to say ‘this is what happened on the ground.’” 

When Shtayyeh did manage to cover a military operation in Jenin in October of last year, he told CPJ that he and a colleague came under fire by Israeli forces while they were filming from inside a building under construction. “We were stuck to the wall for half an hour, terrified that we would be shot,” he said. Their calls for help were broadcast on Palestinian media, where Amira Hass, a veteran Israeli correspondent for Haaretz, heard them. She told CPJ she called the army spokesperson’s office and told a soldier on duty, “Act quickly, because we don’t want another Shireen Abu Akleh, do we?” Soon after, the journalists, who were not injured, were allowed to leave the area. 

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and the police told Haaretz of this incident that it was “not aware of any accusations of fire being aimed at members of the media.” 

Families of journalists have little recourse inside Israel

The family of one Palestinian journalist on CPJ’s list filed a lawsuit in an Israeli court over the journalist’s death, but the case yielded no results. Imad Abu Zahra, a Palestinian freelance photographer who worked as a fixer for the foreign press, was photographing an Israeli armored personnel carrier that had hit an electrical pole in the West Bank city of Jenin when Israeli tanks opened fire, killing him and injuring a colleague in 2002. 

“My son used to tell me that as a journalist he was protected and no one would hurt him,” his mother Hiyam Abu Zahra told CPJ. “But he lost his life with his camera, not using a weapon, because he wanted to show the people what was really happening.” 

Abu Zahra’s family filed a tort claim in a Tel Aviv magistrate court against the state of Israel for compensation for the death. According to court documents, Abu Zahra’s colleague testified that Palestinians threw fruits and vegetables at the Israeli soldiers before they fired on the journalist. But the judge accepted the state’s version of events and said that the soldiers were forced to “open fire in view of the danger posed to their lives and safety” after a crowd allegedly hurled stones, Molotov cocktails, and used small firearms against them. The judge rejected the family’s claim and in 2011 ordered the family to pay 20,000 shekels (about US$5,800 at the time) in court fees.  

Sameh Darwazeh, the son of Associated Press Television News’ Darwazeh, who was killed in 2003, said his family attempted lawsuits in the Israeli system, but eventually gave up because the cost was prohibitive. He said the lack of justice has “opened the way for the repetitive killing of journalists, and the biggest example is the killing of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.” 

Abu Akleh’s media outlet is looking beyond the Israeli justice system. The Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera Media Network submitted a formal request to the International Criminal Court — which in 2015 said it had jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories — late last year asking it to investigate Abu Akleh’s killing and prosecute those responsible for what the network described as a “blatant murder.” The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is also investigating the incident, but Israel has said it will not cooperate. 

In a statement ahead of the one-year anniversary of Abu Akleh’s death, the network called on journalists and governments worldwide to act so that the “perpetrators are held accountable and brought to justice, to ensure that no other journalist pays the ultimate price for merely carrying out their duty.” 

Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera has continued reporting on the Israeli occupation without the correspondent who defined the beat for a generation of TV viewers. In an essay published in 2021, Abu Akleh wrote about the city where she would die the following year, calling Jenin the embodiment of the Palestinian spirit. Today, the site of her death has become a shrine; the tree where she collapsed is covered in photos of the reporter who once walked the nearby streets, microphone in hand. 

Journalists killed by the Israeli military:

Muhammad al-Bishawi
Raffaele Ciriello
Imad Abu Zahra
Issam Tillawi
Nazih Darwazeh
James Miller
Mohamed Abu Halima
Fadel Shana
Basil Nabil Ibrahim Faraj
Hussam Salama
Mahmoud al-Kumi
Hamid Shihab
Khaled Reyadh Hamad
Mohammed Nour al-Din al-Deiri
Rami Rayan
Sameh al-Aryan
Yaser Murtaja
Ahmed Abu Hussein
Yousef Abu Hussein
Shireen Abu Akleh

On January 22, 2022, an Istanbul court charged Turkish freelance journalist Sedef Kabaş with insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan based on her comments as a guest during a political talk show, according to news reports. Kabaş was arrested from her house after midnight and jailed as a “flight risk,” the reports said.

On January 14, 2022, Kabaş said on “The Arena of Democracy” show on pro-opposition TV channel TELE1, “When cattle enters a palace, it does not become king but the palace becomes a stable,” during a discussion about Erdoğan. Kabaş said she was using a proverb and changed it, from ox to cattle, and therefore did not mean to insult the president, according to reports.

Turkey’s telecommunications watchdog RTÜK fined TELE1 for the episode for “inciting hatred” and banned the show from broadcasting for five episodes, according to reports.

“Sedef Kabaş’s arrest for her comments on live TV is as unacceptable as the fine and ban issued to TELE1,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “Turkish authorities should pay more respect to the freedom of speech and try to be more open to criticism. Kabaş should immediately be released, and the authorities should drop the charge against her, alongside canceling the fine and ban issued to TELE1 TV.”

Kabaş appears frequently on political talk shows at Turkey’s remaining opposition television stations and is well-known as a former television host. She currently runs Sedef Kabaş TV, a YouTube channel, with 87,000 followers, in which she discusses politics with her guests. Kabaş also has over 899,000 followers on Twitter.

The journalist’s lawyers have objected to the arrest order, according to reports.

A conviction for insulting Turkey’s president can carry a sentence of up to four years in prison, with an added penalty if the insult was made in public, according to Article 299 of the Turkish penal code The European Court of Human Rights has called on Turkey to change the law.

Between 2014 – when Erdoğan became president – and October 2021, 160,169 cases were investigated under Article 299, with 35,507 cases going to trial and 12,881 convictions, according to Justice Ministry data cited by Reuters. Erdoğan’s “insult” cases reach beyond the borders of Turkey, including the president suing the Greek newspaper Dimokratia and French cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo, as CPJ has documented.

CPJ emailed the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office and RTÜK for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

On May 11 and 12, Israeli warplanes bombed and destroyed the Al-Jawhara and Al-Shorouk office buildings in Gaza City, which house more than a dozen international and local media outlets, according to news reports, a statement by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, and Louay al-Ghoul, head of the syndicate in Gaza, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Residents were warned to evacuate the Al-Jawhara building before the air strike, and planes fired two warning shots at the Al-Shorouk building before firing missiles, according to multiple news reports. CPJ could not immediately confirm whether any journalists were killed or injured in the attacks; those reports said that the buildings had been evacuated, but a report by the BBC stated that there had been unidentified “civilian deaths” in the Al-Jawhara strike.

“It is utterly unacceptable for Israel to bomb and destroy the offices of media outlets and endanger the lives of journalists, especially since Israeli authorities know where those media outlets are housed,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa representative, Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “Israeli authorities must ensure that journalists can do their jobs safely without fear of being injured or killed.”

According to reports published by the affected outlets, Israeli planes destroyed the 12-story Al-Jawhara building, which housed the offices of:

• London-based Qatari broadcaster Al-Araby TV
• News website and newspaper Al-Etejah TV
• Pro-Fatah broadcaster Al-Kofiya TV
• Jordanian broadcaster Al-Mamlaka
• Pro-Hamas outlet Sabq24 News Agency
• News website Watania News Agency
• Media rights group Forum of Palestinian Journalists

The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and news reports also stated that the building housed the offices of the broadcaster Al-Nujaba TV, affiliated with the Iraqi militia Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba; the state-owned broadcaster Syria TV; and the local photo agency APA Images. CPJ was unable to find any information published by those outlets concerning the airstrike.

The nearby office of the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera was also damaged by the bombing of the Al-Jawhara building, according to the syndicate statement and a report by the broadcaster.

Israeli forces also bombed and destroyed the Al-Shorouk building, which housed the offices of:

• Hamas-affiliated broadcasters Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Aqsa Radio
• The media production company PMP
• The pro-Hamas broadcaster Al-Quds Today
• The Palestinian National Authority-affiliated newspaper Reuters.

  [Editors’ note: This article has been updated to include the IDF’s response to CPJ’s request for comment.]

  Via Committee to Protect Journalists

  Except where noted, text on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  —–

  Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

  MSNBC: “Israel’s ‘Credibility Problem’ Following Attack On Gaza AP Offices”

  ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2021/05/security-palestinian-journalist-ramallah.html Sat, 01 May 2021 04:01:14 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=197534 ( Committee to Protect Journalists) – Israeli authorities should immediately make public any charges against Palestinian journalist Alaa al-Rimawi and disclose where he is being held, or release him unconditionally at once, the Committee to Protect Journalists said last week

  Early on the morning of April 21, a group of about 12 Israeli soldiers raided the Ramallah home of al-Rimawi, a reporter for the Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera Mubasher and director of the local J-Media Network news agency, and arrested him, according to news reports, reports by Al-Jazeera and J-Media, and statements by the local press freedom organizations MADA and the Skeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom.

  Israeli authorities did not disclose any reason for the journalist’s arrest or where he is being held, according to those sources. In a video interview with Al-Jazeera, al-Rimawi’s wife, Maymouna al-Rimawi, said that, while he was being taken from his home, the journalist said he would go on a hunger strike in prison.

  “Israeli authorities cannot simply arrest journalists and spirit them away to undisclosed locations without any public disclosure of the alleged offenses they committed,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa representative, Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “Israeli authorities should either disclose any charges filed against Palestinian journalist Alaa al-Rimawi or release him immediately.”

  Al-Rimawi works as Al-Jazeera Mubasher’s correspondent in Ramallah and hosts J-Media’s talk show “Palestine Votes,” where he has recently interviewed political candidates, academic experts, and journalists about the upcoming Palestinian legislative and presidential elections, scheduled for May and July.

  J-Media mainly covers local news in the Palestinian Territories, including stories about Palestinian prisoners, local protests, and Ramadan celebrations. It also provides footage and stories for partner organizations, including Al-Jazeera Mubasher.

  Previously, in July 2018, Israeli security forces arrested al-Rimawi, then the director of the Hamas-affiliated broadcaster Al-Quds TV in the West Bank, and held him for nearly one month; upon his release, he was ordered to stop working as a journalist for two months, according to news reports and CPJ’s coverage from the time.

  After the publication of this article, the Israel Defense Force’s North America desk responded to CPJ’s emailed request for comment and directed questions to the General Security Service, which it said was responsible for the operation that resulted in al-Rimawi’s arrest.

  CPJ emailed the General Security Service for comment but did not receive any reply.

  [Editors’ note: This article has been updated to include the Israel Defense Force’s response to CPJ.]

  Via Committee to Protect Journalists)

  —-

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  ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2020/12/journalist-sentenced-fundamentalist.html Tue, 29 Dec 2020 05:01:49 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=195215 ( Committee to Protect Journalists) | –

  The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned a Turkish court’s conviction and sentencing of exiled journalist Can Dündar.

  On December 23, the 14th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes announced that Dündar, who lives in Germany, had been sentenced to 18 years and nine months in prison for an espionage conviction, and eight years and nine months for “aiding a terrorist organization without being a member,” according to news reports.

  The court also issued an arrest order for Dündar, and ordered the journalist to pay 8,200 liras (US$1,073) to the lawyers of the National Intelligence Agency (MİT) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, complainants in the trial, and 7,139 liras (US$934) to the Treasury for the trial costs, according to reports.

  Dündar’s lawyers did not attend the hearing, saying, “We do not want to be part of a practice to legitimize a previously decided, political verdict,” according to those news reports.

  “Turkish authorities have shown again that they will use all means at their disposal to harass and threaten members of the press,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “We condemn today’s sentencing of journalist Can Dündar, and are relieved that he is safely out of the country.”

  Dündar, then chief editor of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet, was first arrested in November 2015 over his reporting on alleged MİT trucks being used to smuggle arms to rebel groups in Syria, as CPJ documented at the time.

  In 2015, Erdoğan referenced Dündar’s reporting, saying, “The person who wrote this story will pay a heavy price for it; I won’t let him go unpunished.”

  He was released pending trial in February 2016; in May of that year, he was sentenced to prison but remained free on appeal, and in August 2016 announced that he would not return to Turkey, as CPJ documented.

  In 2016, Dündar received CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in recognition of his work amid government repression.

  CPJ emailed the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office for comment but did not immediately receive any reply.

  Creative Commons.

  ——

  Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

  Academy in Exile: “Can Dündar | Journalism in Exile”

  ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2020/02/security-palestinian-journalist.html Thu, 06 Feb 2020 05:02:40 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=188966 (Beirut) — Israeli authorities should reveal the reason for journalist Mohammad Malhem’s arrest or release him immediately, and should investigate the injuries sustained by journalist Abdul Mohsen Shalaldeh and hold those responsible to account, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

  Yesterday, Israeli security forces arrested Malhem, a Palestinian reporter for the Hebron-based radio broadcaster Marah FM, while he was covering protests in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, according to news reports and a statement by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, a local press union, which was shared with CPJ.

  Marah FM posted photos on Facebook of Malhem’s arrest, in which the journalist can be seen in the back of an Israeli military vehicle.

  CPJ could not determine the reason for his arrest or where Malhem is being held.

  Also in Hebron yesterday, Shalaldeh, a freelance Palestinian journalist working on assignment for Qatari broadcaster Al-Jazeera Mubasher, suffered a skull fracture after being hit by a rubber bullet fired by Israeli security forces, according to news reports and the journalist’s brother, Loay Shaladeh, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

  Both journalists were covering protests against the proposed peace plan for the region recently announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, according to those news reports.

  “The arrest of Mohammad Malhem and the injuries suffered by Abdul Mohsen Shalaldeh are part of a pattern of Israeli security forces showing little regard for the safety of Palestinian journalists,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Representative Ignacio Miguel Delgado. “Israeli authorities should investigate the injuries sustained by Shalaldeh, and should either file charges against Malhem or release him immediately.”

  The Israeli Defense Forces did not immediately reply to CPJ’s emailed requests for comment on either case.

  In a video shared widely on social media, Shalaldeh is seen immediately after being shot and is wearing a clearly marked press vest.

  “A female soldier shot him directly in the head with a rubber bullet and, even though he was wearing his helmet, he suffered a skull fracture,” Loay Shalaldeh told CPJ, relaying what his brother had told him. “He was transferred to Al-Ahly Hospital, where he stayed for 24 hours and was discharged earlier today.”

  The journalist’s brother said that doctors requested Shalaldeh return for check-ups over the next three days.

  CPJ has documented multiple instances of Israeli security forces arresting and injuring journalists with live and rubber bullets in recent months.

  ———

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  Watch: Palestinian journalist was injured by Israeli occupation forces

  ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2019/06/assange-indictment-alarming.html Sun, 02 Jun 2019 05:55:40 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=184415 Mexico City ( Committee to Protect Journalists) – The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by the U.S. Justice Department’s indictment last week of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The administration of President Donald Trump disclosed 17 charges against Assange under the Espionage Act, relating to his receipt and publication of classified military documents and diplomatic cables in 2010 and 2011.

  The indictment marks the first time the U.S. government has prosecuted a publisher under the Espionage Act. The act, which was passed in 1917 following the U.S. entry into to World War I, criminalizes the copying, obtaining, communicating, or transmitting of national defense information.

  The charges are part of a superseding indictment against Assange; an indictment dated March 2018 charged him with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, as CPJ reported. Assange is fighting a U.S. extradition request in the U.K., where he is serving a 50-week sentence for violating his bail conditions, according to reports.

  The expanded indictment, disclosed yesterday and reviewed by CPJ, cite as evidence Assange’s public statements encouraging leaks, his communications with U.S. Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning, and the publication of classified documents.

  “The Trump administration has bullied reporters, denied press credentials, and covered up for foreign dictators who attack journalists. This indictment, however, may end up being the administration’s greatest legal threat to reporters,” said CPJ North America Coordinator Alexandra Ellerbeck. “It is a reckless assault on the First Amendment that crosses a line no previous administration has been willing to cross, and threatens to criminalize the most basic practices of reporting.”

  Courts have not previously weighed in on whether such a case violates First Amendment protections.

  In a briefing with reporters yesterday, John Demers, the head of the National Security Division for the U.S. Department of Justice, said that Assange was not a journalist, and that it “is not and has never been the department’s policy to target [journalists] for reporting,” according to the New York Times.

  Military and diplomatic cables obtained and shared by WikiLeaks disclosed civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, cases of torture in Iraqi prisons that the U.S. did not appear to investigate, U.S. opposition to a minimum wage law in Haiti, and a video showing a U.S. helicopter attack that killed two Reuters reporters.

  At least three counts of the indictment charge Assange with creating a “grave and imminent risk to human life” through the publication of unredacted documents that included the names of individuals who had assisted the U.S. in conflict zones. In its prosecution of Manning, U.S. prosecutors argued that the leaks put hundreds of lives at risk, according to news reports.

  The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, and other news organizations all obtained and published classified information from the documents published by WikiLeaks.

  Matthew Miller, a former chief spokesperson for the Justice Department under the Obama administration, told Politico that the Obama administration declined to pursue an indictment of Assange out of concern for the press freedom precedent and doubts about whether charges would hold up in court.

  “The Espionage Act doesn’t make any distinction between journalists and non-journalists,” he told theNew York Times. “If you can charge Julian Assange under the law with publishing classified information, there is nothing under the law that prevents the Justice Department from charging a journalist.”

  In a thread on Twitter, Carrie DeCell, a First Amendment lawyer with the Knight Institute, said, “The government argues that Assange violated the Espionage Act by soliciting, obtaining, and then publishing classified information. That’s exactly what good national security and investigative journalists do every day.”

  Previous administrations have considered using the Espionage Act against reporters: the Nixon administration convened a grand jury to investigate the reporters who published the Pentagon Papers, and the Obama Justice Department opened a grand jury investigation into Assange, but decided against pursuing prosecution under the act.

  Under the Obama administration, which pursued more Espionage Act indictments against journalistic sources than all previous administrations combined, eight government employees or contractors faced Espionage Act prosecutions for allegedly shared classified information with the media, according to CPJ research.

  Manning, who was charged under the Espionage Act and spent seven years in prison before President Obama commuted her sentence in 2017, was arrested again in March for refusing the testify in a grand jury hearing about Assange; she was briefly released in early May after the term of the grand jury expired, but was rearrested on May 16, according to news reports.

  CPJ sent a letter to the Obama administration in 2010 urging against prosecuting Assange for the publication of classified information. CPJ has since covered the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit against WikiLeaks and the potential dangers posed by the initial count of computer hacking leveled against Assange in April.

  Via Committee to Protect Journalists

  ———

  Bonus Video:

  The Intercept: “Why You Should Care About Trump’s War on Whistleblowers”

  ]]> https://www.juancole.com/2019/04/endangered-conspiracy-publisher.html Sat, 13 Apr 2019 04:07:34 +0000 https://www.juancole.com/?p=183428 (Committee to Protect Journalists) – New York, April 11, 2019–The Committee to Protect Journalists today said it was deeply concerned by the U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Authorities in the United Kingdom arrested Assange this morning at the Ecuadoran Embassy as part of an extradition agreement with the U.S., according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice.

  The statement said Assange faces a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The charge relates to Assange’s interactions with Chelsea Manning, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who was convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks and spent seven years in prison. According to the indictment, Assange allegedly offered to help Manning break a password to a secure government database.

  The indictment does not explicitly charge Assange for publication, a move that would have wide-ranging press freedom implications, but it does construe his interactions with Manning as part of a criminal conspiracy. “It was part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States,” count 20 of the indictment states.

  “The potential implications for press freedom of this allegation of conspiracy between publisher and source are deeply troubling,” said Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “With this prosecution of Julian Assange, the U.S. government could set out broad legal arguments about journalists soliciting information or interacting with sources that could have chilling consequences for investigative reporting and the publication of information of public interest.”

  The arrest took place after the Ecuadoran Embassy withdrew asylum protections from Assange. Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno said on Twitter that the decision was made because of Assange’s “repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.”

  Assange took refuge in the Ecuadoran Embassy in 2012 while facing questioning related to accusations against him for sexual assault in Sweden. Assange denied those accusations and argued that arrest in Sweden or the U.K. would lead to his extradition to the U.S. where he would face prosecution for his publishing activities.

  CPJ has long raised concerns about the legal implications for a prosecution of Assange, primarily related to legal theories that he could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act. In 2010, CPJ wrote a letter urging the DOJ not to prosecute WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act for publishing activities. In 2018, CPJ published a blog arguing that conspiracy charges against Assange could set a dangerous precedent.

  Via Committee to Protect Journalists

  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

  Except where noted, text on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

  —

  Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

  Democracy Now! “Chomsky: Arrest of Assange Is “Scandalous” and Highlights Shocking Extraterritorial Reach of U.S.”

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