Palestinian President: Israel’s crime of killing Abu Akleh must not go unpunished

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has stressed that the Israeli occupation’s crime of killing the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh must not go unpunished, pointing out that the Palestinian Authority “will immediately go to the International Criminal Court to prosecute the criminals.”

“We hold the Israeli occupation authorities fully responsible for the murder, and they will not be able with this crime to hide the truth, and this crime must not go unpunished,” Abbas said during the funeral of Abu Akleh.

President Abbas described Abu Akleh as “a hero who sacrificed her life in defense of her cause and her people. She was an honest and patriotic voice who conveyed the suffering of the mothers of martyrs and prisoners, the suffering of Al-Quds, the camps, the protests and the incursions into towns and villages.”

 He said that Abu Akleh was not the first to be killed by the occupation, as dozens of other Palestinian journalists were martyred because of saying the truth.

He clarified that the Palestinian Authority has refused calls for a joint investigation with Israel into the murder of Abu Akleh “because it is they who committed the crime and because we do not trust them,” stressing that “we will immediately go to the International Criminal Court to prosecute the criminals.”

Hamda Mustafa