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Israeli police said on Thursday they had concluded an internal investigation into violence at the funeral of slain Al Jazeera television journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, though they did not make their findings public.
Police launched the investigation following international outcry after the veteran reporter’s coffin was about to fall when police attacked pallbearers during her funeral last month.
Thousands of people attended the service in East Jerusalem, and footage of the riots was broadcast live on television. Israeli authorities blamed Palestinian protesters for the ugly scenes.
Police commander Kobi Shabtai said Thursday that “we cannot remain indifferent to these harsh images and we must investigate so that sensitive events of this order are not violently disturbed by rioters.”
“The police, under my instructions, investigated to assess the performance of their forces on the ground in order to draw conclusions and improve operational progress in this type of event,” he said in a statement.
The results of the investigation were presented to the Minister of Public Works, a police spokesman said.
Abu Akleh was shot dead last month while covering an Israeli army operation in the Jenin countryside in the occupied West Bank.
The investigation
A Palestinian investigation claimed that an Israeli soldier shot her dead in what it described as a war crime.
Israel has denied the accusations, arguing that she may have been killed by a Palestinian gunman.
Abu Akleh’s brother, Anton, flatly rejected the police investigation into the disturbances at his funeral.
“We don’t care what Israel says or does, everything is clear in the photos. The police are the aggressor,” he told AFP. “They are trying to cover up their actions and mistakes.”
Abu Akleh was also a US citizen, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the Israeli police’s performance at the funeral.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the United States was seeking more information about the funeral investigation.
“Certainly, for us, the normal thing is that these investigations – the conclusions of these investigations – are made public,” Price told reporters in Washington.
Price reiterated that the United States believed there had been “disturbing intrusions into what should have been a peaceful procession” at the funeral.
Al Jazeera gets a picture of the bullet
The Al Jazeera network, for which Abu Akleh worked as a correspondent, has said it has obtained an image of the bullet used in Abu Akleh’s murder.
Al Jazeera reports that the bullet has a green tip. A Palestinian official has told the network that the government will keep the bullet for further investigation.
*With AFP; adapted from its English version
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