The family of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh met with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, on Tuesday, July 26, to demand justice for her martyrdom by the Israeli occupation bullets in the occupied West Bank.
On July 13, Blinken invited the journalist’s family to a meeting with him at the ministry’s headquarters in Washington, with the aim of announcing before them the commitment of the United States regarding accountability for the incident
Lina Abu Akleh, Shireen Abu Akleh’s niece posted a video clip on Twitter from outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that she and other members of her family were there to “demand justice for Shireen.”
Lina’s statement on Twitter said, “We will pursue accountability for her murder, no matter what. She lived to reveal the truth behind every story, and so will we.”
Blinken, in a tweet after the meeting, said that Abu Akleh’s “fearless journalism earned her the respect of audiences around the world.”
“I expressed my deepest condolences and commitment to pursue accountability for her tragic killing,” Blinken said.
After the meeting, Lina said on her Twitter account, “Our family just finished meeting with the US Secretary of State, although he made some commitments regarding Sherine’s killing, we are still waiting to see if this administration will respond meaningfully to the incident.”
“The secretary told us it’s his duty to protect every American citizen, and we’ll hold him accountable for that. Nothing is acceptable less than an American investigation that leads to real accountability, and we won’t stop until no American or Palestinian family is in the same pain as we.”
She continued, “We expressed to the Secretary of State how important it is to have an interview with US President Joe Biden, as a meeting with him will prove to our family that the Sheerin issue is a priority for this administration, and since he did not meet us in Jerusalem, we came to the (US) capital. We want him to hear from us directly.”
She stated that the US Secretary of State “is committed to being transparent with our family in the future, and we expect to be consulted and informed of every step of the case.”
Abu Akleh’s family had called for a meeting with Biden when he visited Israel and the occupied West Bank earlier this month, but the US President did not grant their request.
“Since the President didn’t come to us in Jerusalem to hear first-hand our grief, outrage and concerns regarding his administration’s lack of response to Shireen’s extrajudicial killing, we decided to come to him,” the Abu Akleh family said in a statement first reported by Politico earlier on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, May 11, the Israeli occupation forces assassinated Shireen Abu Akleh while she was on her way to cover the situation and developments in the Jenin camp, even though she was wearing a bullet-proof vest with the press logo and a protective helmet.
On Friday, May 13, thousands of Palestinians in East Jerusalem participated in the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh.
Leading American press organizations, such as CNN and the Associated Press, Washington Post and New York Times, had published their own investigations, concluding that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli bullets, and Al Jazeera conducted an investigation that reached the same conclusion.
On June 24, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces fire, while Israel ruled out that the bullet that hit her was intentional, considering that the UN investigation was “baseless.”
On July 4, the United States announced that Israeli army shootings were “likely responsible” for the Al Jazeera journalist’s death, although the US-supervised examination of the bullet “did not reach a definitive conclusion” as to its source because bullet case.
