May 25, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
A joint investigation between Bellingcat, The Insider, and McClatchy DC Bureau has conclusively identified another key person of interest in the ongoing investigation of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17). The person known as ’Andrey Ivanovich’, a.k.a. call sign ‘Orion’, is in fact a high-ranking Russian GRU officer named Oleg Vladimirovich Ivannikov. Русская…
May 16, 2018
Today’s OPCW-FFM report on the February 4 2018 chemical attack in Saraqib, Idlib, reveals not only information about the Saraqib attack, but also the broader use of chemical weapons in Syria, and additional evidence to support the theory Syrian government forces were behind the April 7 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Damascus. Consistent with Bellingcat’s…
May 13, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
This report (Spanish version) was co-researched and authored by Giancarlo Fiorella (@invenezuelablog), author of In Venezuela, and Aliaume Leroy (@Yaolri), member of the Bellingcat Investigation Team. Bellingcat undertook the investigation in collaboration with Forensic Architecture who have constructed a navigable three-dimensional digital platform of El Junquito in which the more than 60 pieces of evidence…
May 13, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
Este informe (versión inglesa) fue co-investigado y escrito por Giancarlo Fiorella (@invenezuelablog), autor del blog In Venezuela, y Aliaume Leroy (@Yaolri), miembro del Equipo de Investigación de Bellingcat. Bellingcat hizo esta investigación en colaboración con Forensic Architecture, quienes construyeron un modelo digital navegable de tres dimensiones de El Junquito el cual ubica más de 60…
May 10, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
The full investigation can be downloaded here A collection of intercepted phone conversations that were used as research materials in this investigation can be accessed here Our directory of archived videos of the Mariupol shelling and its aftermath can be accessed here Our map summarizing the estimated trajectories and potential firing sites near Mariupol can be…
May 7, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
The Bellingcat Investigation Team has determined conclusively that the artillery attack on the Ukrainian town of Mariupol on 24 January 2015, which resulted in at least 30 civilian deaths and over 100 injuries, came from Russia-controlled territory. Bellingcat has also determined that the shelling operation was instructed, directed and supervised by Russian military commanders in…
May 4, 2018
Written in cooperation with @SCW_Nuggie. Over the course of seven years of war, Syrian rebels have been fighting an army which once had the 6th largest number of tanks in the world. This article will detail the collection of footage of Syrian rebel anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) use and their impact on events during Syrian…
May 1, 2018
A previous report by Eliot Higgins summarized the evidence for at least two yellow gas cylinders being associated with the April 7, 2018 attacks in Douma, Syria. That report discusses the similarities to previous attacks in Syria known to have involved chlorine gas and mentions fatality counts reported from Douma ranging from 43 – 85+….
April 29, 2018
Following the Douma chemical attack on April 7th 2018, much attention has been paid to two impact sites where the remains of yellow gas cylinders were discovered. While much has been made of the position of these gas cylinders, less attention has been paid to the historical use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in…
April 27, 2018
By Aric Toler
On April 22, the Saudi-led coalition carried out multiple airstrikes on a wedding in Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate, with reports of at least 33 dead, including the bride. Reportedly, the majority of casualties were women and children. Survivors of the attack described how the jets continued to circle the bombing site after the attack, preventing first…
May 1, 2018
Due to high demand, Bellingcat will be offering an additional London workshop on the week of July 9th to 13th. In addition, we are currently measuring interest for workshops in Washington, New York, and San Francisco. If you are interested in potentially participating in a 5 day Bellingcat workshop in one of those 3 cities…
April 19, 2018
On 18 April 2018 Syrian Archive and Knack revealed information that Belgium violated EU sanctions against Syria according to the summons of an upcoming lawsuit. The Belgian customs found that without having requested the appropriate export licenses three Flemish companies have exported 96 tonnes of isopropanol in a concentration of 95% or higher to Syria…
March 8, 2018
By Dan Kaszeta
The former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter have been deliberately poisoned, in an apparent act of chemical terrorism. This poisoning occurred in Salisbury, in the UK, on Sunday 4 March 2018. It has recently been disclosed that this particular act involved the use of a “nerve agent”. Already, there are numerous examples…
February 22, 2018
By Aric Toler
Throughout this story, click on any of the images to view in full resolution. When conducting open source investigations, an ever-present issue is how to archive away the materials you are researching. For example, a social media post may be deleted by a user after you publish an investigation, or a video on YouTube showing…
February 21, 2018
Bellingcat is holding a series of workshops in Europe in 2018, where participants can learn the tools and methodologies used by Bellingcat in their investigations. Currently 5 day workshops are planned for the following dates: Amsterdam June 25th – 29th FULL London July 2nd – July 6th FULL Participants are required to bring their own laptops, and…
February 10, 2018
Following a Bellingcat workshop, a group of investigative journalists from the Dutch public broadcaster KRO-NCRV spent the last six months investigating social media platforms used by the Dutch National Police Force. After analyzing data and footage from YouTube videos, tweets, Facebook and Instagram posts, we reached the following conclusion: Dutch police are sometimes careless with…
January 29, 2018
By Aric Toler
Recently, the fitness app Strava published a “heatmap” of trillion of data points visualizing the information of users who submitted or synchronized their fitness activity to their servers. This data includes both fitness information recorded directly on the fitness app and data synchronized with the app from a number of physical fitness trackers, such as…
November 13, 2017
You can read the original blogpost by Fiete Stegers, on which this article was based, here. Where exactly was a photo on Twitter taken? When was a Facebook video recorded? Is that image fake, or authentic? These are just some of the common questions you can face when verifying social media content. A few months ago, Julia…
October 27, 2017
Introduction In June we published on a previously unknown group we named “Bahamut,” a strange campaign of phishing and malware apparently focused on the Middle East and South Asia. In the Bahamut report, we documented a capable actor interested in a diverse set of political, economic, and non-governmental targets, which suggested espionage rather than criminal…
October 17, 2017
By Aric Toler
Much of Bellingcat’s work requires intense research into particular events, which includes finding every possible photograph, video, and witness account that will help inform our analysis. Perhaps most notably, we exhaustively researched the events surrounding the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) over eastern Ukraine. The photographs and videos taking near the crash…
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