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US colonel says report on Shireen Abu Akleh killing diluted
Shireen Abu Akleh 1971-2022
A COLONEL in the US military police has said that official findings about the 2022 killing of Shireen Abu Akleh were soft-pedalled to appease Israel. Steve Gabavics, a sometime commandant of the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, was in 2022 in the Office of the United States Security Coordinator - which facilitates cooperation between the Israeli and Palestinian security services, and conducted the US review of Shireen's shooting.
Now retired, Colonel Gabavics took part in the May 2025 documentary Who Killed Shireen? from Zeteo. On 27 October 2025 the New York Times published an interview with him and four other US officials. In that he said that the US government avoiding calling Shireen's shooting intentional “continued to be on my conscience nonstop”. In that office “the favoritism is always toward the Israelis. Very little of that goes to the Palestinians.”
Colonel Gabavics concluded that for the shooting to be accidental, “the most absurd thing in the world” would have had to happen. “The individual popped out of the truck, just was randomly shooting, and happened to have really well-aimed shots and never looked down the scope. Which wouldn’t have happened.”
He and three other former officials at the office told the NYT that he repeatedly inserted stronger language into the draft report. His boss General Michael Fenzel repeatedly deleted these and in the end removed him from the case. Officials told the NYT that the Israeli military had previously stopped co-operating with General Fenzel's office when displeased. General Fenzel declined to comment.
A US State Department statement on 4 July 2022 attributed the shooting to “tragic circumstances”.
In November 2022 the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under political pressure, opened an inquiry. It has not reported.
Who Killed Shireen? zeteo.com
Remembering Shireen Abu Akleh June 2022