The Killing of Rouzan al-Najjar (2019)

On the evening of 1 June 2018, a large group of Palestinian protesters gathered at one of the five principal protest sites, near the village of Khuzaa. At 6:31pm, a shot was fired from beyond the border fence into the crowd. The bullet killed Rouzan al-Najjar, 21, a volunteer medic. Two of her fellow medics, Mohammed Shafee and Rami Abo Jazar, were wounded at the same time. The death of al-Najjar, who was widely revered among the protesters, sent shockwaves throughout Palestine. Forensic Architecture was commissioned by the New York Times to undertake spatial analysis of the scene of al-Najjar’s death. By digitally recreating the protest site from video evidence, we used the precise location of the three gunshot victims as a means to derive the trajectory of the bullet, and trace its ‘cone of fire’ back to its origin, a sniper’s berm at the border fence. -FA