UN, International Criminal Court Asked to Investigate Murder of Palestinian Journalist Saleh Aljafarawi

After his death, Meta deleted his Instagram account, thereby destroying a critical historical record of the genocide.

On Monday, October 13, legal representatives for murdered Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi filed complaints and demands for investigations with the International Criminal Court and multiple UN committees and special rapporteurs, Sara Segneri, a partner at Confinium Strategies, announced this week on social media.

The requests for investigations were sent to UN Special Rapporteur for Free Expression, UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, and UN Committee Against Torture, Segneri told The Carceral Report in an email. The agencies will review the submissions and “hopefully conduct their own investigations,” she said.

“This was not a random tragedy but a targeted attack on a journalist — a young man dedicated to showing the world the truth of Gaza’s suffering,” Segneri wrote on social media.

Just days after the renowned journalist announced the ceasefire agreement, a militia killed Aljafarawi, according to news reports. In June, Prime Minister and accused war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that Israel had “activated” militias in Gaza.

“He was in Al-Sabra to document the destruction left after the Israeli withdrawal, and armed men cooperating with the Israeli occupation shot him,” his father, Amer al-Jafarawi, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), who said his son was wearing a press vest and helmet at the time of the attack.

The beloved journalist was buried on the same day Israel released his brother, Naji Aljafrawani, one of the hundreds of Palestinian hostages freed from Israel’s torture camps, as part of the ceasefire deal.

Aljafarawi wrote a letter to be shared in the event of his death:

I have lived through pain and oppression in all its details, tasted the agony and the loss of loved ones time and again, and yet I never hesitated for a single day to convey the truth as it is — the truth that will remain a testament against all who faltered and remained silent, and also an honor for all who supported, stood by, and championed the most noble, honorable, and dignified people: the people of Gaza…

Do not think that my martyrdom is the end,

but rather the beginning of a long journey toward freedom.

After his death, Meta deleted his Instagram account, thereby destroying a critical historical record of the genocide.

“The account deletion not only infringes on Saleh’s right to free speech, but it also violates the public’s right to know information about ongoing atrocities, and interferes with the investigations into war crimes and other international law violations in Palestine,” Segneri said.

She continued: “I have included this in our filings, both as to Meta’s actions, but also wrongdoing by countries acting in concert with Meta or directing their actions.”

Over the last two years, Meta repeatedly suspended or restricted Aljafarawi’s account, Segneri said.

“This was part of Meta’s ongoing censorship of anything related to Palestine that was not pro-Israel, and their content moderation problems in distinguishing between reporting on atrocities vs. praise for ‘dangerous organisations,’ e.g. Hamas,” Segneri told The Carceral Report in an email.

Human Rights Watch documented, between October and November 2023, over a thousand instances of censorship of content on Instagram and Facebook that had been “posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses.”

Last year, The Intercept reported that Jordana Cutler, Meta’s Israel & the Jewish Diaspora policy chief, “personally pushed for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine,” although it was unclear if her efforts were successful.

Israel has long murdered Palestinian journalists with impunity, but since the genocide began, the pace of assassinations has accelerated.

Over the last two years, Israel has killed more than 250 Palestinian journalists in Gaza — more than “the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined,” according to a report from Brown University’s Watson Institute released in April.

More total journalists and media workers were killed in the Iraq war over a more than twenty year period — from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 to March of this year. However, in Iraq, about 13 journalists were killed per year. In Gaza, about 13 journalists were killed each month, according to the report.

“Israel is engaging in the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists that CPJ has ever documented,” the press freedom group said in a statement on its website.

“Palestinian journalists are being threatened, directly targeted, and murdered by Israeli forces, and are arbitrarily detained and tortured in retaliation for their work,” the group continued.

In August, Israel bombed a media tent outside Al-Shifa hospital, killing Al Jazeera correspondents Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal. Freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa and freelance journalist Mohammed al-Khalidi were also killed.

Before his murder, Israeli military officials had repeatedly threatened al-Sharif.

“Since the beginning of the war, I have personally faced several threats and assassination attempts by the Israeli army. I lost my father and several relatives as part of the efforts to force me to stop my news coverage,” al-Sharif told Drop Site News earlier this year.

“Despite the threats and danger, I will not, and will never, stop this coverage — until my last breath, because I am fighting for a just cause.”

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Photo by Delia Giandeini on Unsplash.