In Omar Assad’s case, the Israeli military said last June it was not bringing criminal charges against soldiers who were involved in his death, even after he was alleged to have been dragged from a car, bound and blindfolded after being stopped at a checkpoint.
Paul told the Guardian “numerous people”, including himself, raised concerns over the years inside the state department that the Leahy process “is not working” and that gross violations of human rights were occurring “without accountability”.
For advocates of the Leahy law, like Rieser, the lack of accountability for the killing of Abu Akleh, the prominent Al Jazeera journalist, is particularly galling, and has been the subject of criticism by senior Democrats on Capitol Hill.
A CNN investigation found that there was no active combat or Palestinian militants near Abu Akleh in the moments before she was killed, and footage obtained by the network corroborated witness testimony that suggested Israeli forces had taken aim at the journalist.
In questions to the administration, the senators asked what, if any, steps the United States Security Coordinator (USSC), who conducted an independent forensic analysis of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, took to try to establish who specifically shot her and why.
A February 2016 letter from Leahy to the then secretary of state, John Kerry, cited a “disturbing number of reports of possible gross violations of human rights by security forces in Israel and Egypt”, including “extrajudicial killings by Israeli military and police”.
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