May 2, 2019
All times appear as local time UTC-4. Venezuelans awoke to a tumultuous morning on April 30, 2019. Leopoldo López, the leader of the Voluntad Popular [Popular Will, VP] party — under arrest since 2014 — had been freed. In a pair of messages shared on his Twitter account, López appeared beside National Assembly president Juan…
April 4, 2019
On March 23, 2019, Twitter lit up with a series of images showing two Russian aircraft at the Simón Bolívar International airport just north of Caracas, Venezuela. The images also showed a group of individuals in uniform disembarking from one aircraft, and cargo being unloaded from the other. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian…
March 10, 2019
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
On Saturday February 23 2019, hundreds of volunteers and political activists hoped to deliver over 600 tonnes of humanitarian aid into Venezuela on two bridges connecting Colombia’s Norte de Santander department with Venezuela’s Táchira state, and a road connecting Roraima and Bolívar states in Brazil and Venezuela, respectively. The highly anticipated event was part of…
January 25, 2019
All times appear as local UTC-5. On January 17, 2019, at 9:32 AM, an SUV loaded with 80 kilograms of pentolite exploded inside the Escuela de Cadetes de Policía “General Francisco de Paula Santander (General Francisco de Paula Santander Police Cadet School, ECSAN), the Colombian National Police academy located in southern Bogotá, killing 21 people…
December 22, 2018
By Bellingcat Investigation Team
All times are shown as UTC-4 local time. On December 8, 2018, reports appeared on Twitter claiming that YV2030—an airplane used by President Nicolás Maduro’s nephews during their failed drug trafficking career—was taking part in a military operation in Canaima, a remote town located in Venezuela’s Bolivar state. The news came via a journalist named…
August 7, 2018
By Nick Waters
On the 4th August, President Maduro of Venezuela gave a speech in Caracas, celebrating the 81st anniversary of the National Guard. However, Maduro never finished this speech, as part-way through two explosions rocked the area. He was quickly hustled off stage by his security detail. Claims rapidly spread on social media that the event had been targeted by drone-borne IEDs (BDIED), which were later supported by official statements by the Venezuelan government.
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…
September 2, 2017
By Nick Waters
During the month of July, as unrest raged around Venezuela during a constitutional crises, there were two instances of what appeared to be IEDs being used against the Venezuelan security services. Both IEDs seem to have been effective devices and were deployed in Caracas targeting the Venezuelan National Guard (GNB) and Bolivarian National Police (PNB)…
May 3, 2015
Looks like Iran was unable to deliver the Sorocaima, its first indigenously-built Aframax tanker, to Venezuela after all. Previously, we thought that Iran may have pulled it off. Historical imagery from April to October 2014 did not show the vessel berthed at the shipyard suggesting it had been delivered. But instead, it apparently dropped anchor off…
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