US spokesperson warns against ‘conflating’ killing of American-Israeli captive in Gaza with shooting of Aysenur Eygi.

Officials in the United States have said that Washington still does not “know with full certainty what transpired” when a US citizen was killed by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank last week, stressing that they were waiting for the findings of an Israeli investigation.

The US on Monday also appeared to reject calls for an independent investigation into the fatal shooting of Aysenur Ezgi Eygi. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel declined to acknowledge that Eygi was killed by an Israeli soldier, but he called for the process to “play out and for the facts to be gathered”.

He also urged Israel to “quickly and robustly conduct” its probe and make the findings public but confirmed the administration is not planning to independently investigate the killing — as Eygi’s family requested.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.worldOP
    224·
    2 months ago

    Some more context from the article

    Israeli forces have killed several US citizens in recent years, but the Biden administration has consistently rejected calls for independent investigations into those incidents as well.

    For example, in 2022, Washington resisted demands for a US-led probe into the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military in the West Bank, urging Israel to conduct its own probe instead.

    Israeli authorities eventually dismissed the fatal shooting as an “accident” and refused to pursue criminal charges in the case.

    “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups,” Cindy Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s mother, told Democracy Now on Monday. An Israeli soldier crushed Rachel Corrie to death with a bulldozer in Rafah in 2003. Her family spent years lobbying multiple administrations to launch an independent, US-led probe — to no avail.