Report from #EUArms project shows despite laws prohibiting export of weapons to countries guilty of human rights abuses, Italian govt continued to allow sale of shotgun parts to #Bahrain used to lethally suppress protestors @LHreports@bellingcat 📽️: 👇/1
The law states a clear prohibition of exports of military goods to countries "whose governments are responsible of serious violations of international conventions on human rights verified by competent organisations of the UN or EU Council". /2
We analysed hours of footage of the 2015 protests in #Bahrain to identify where the violations were taking place, when it happened, who was doing it, and what weapons they used. /3
During the protests, we were able to find volumes of open-source evidence, namely on @YouTube, of the Benelli M4 shotgun being used against protestors. For instance, in this video you can see a member of the riot police using an M4 Benelli with live rounds against protestors. /4
We know this is a M4 Benelli (Super 90 semi-auto) by looking at clues in the video, such as the M4's rate of fire & its features. We also know this weapon is firing live ammunition & not protest rounds because of the colour of the shells we cross-referenced with other images. /5
We also know that this video happened in the city of Sitra, Bahrain on March 13, 2015, through #geolocation and #chronolocation. h/t to @Sector035 for the assistance with the shadow calculation and keeping the open source crowdsource community strong 💪 @bellingcat /6
In another video we found further evidence of the excessive use of force where a police officer shot a man in close range with a Benelli M4 shotgun. #ItalianArms#EUArms@LHreports /7
We found reports from #Bahrain internal investigations unit (on @instagram) that the officer that fired the shotgun was charged. It confirms that officer was a member of the brigade that were armed with Benelli M4 weapons. #EUArms#ItalianArms /8
Art 2(2)(a) of The EU Common Position on Arms Export Controls provides: Member states should "deny an export licence if there is a clear risk that the military technology or equipment to be exported might
be used for internal repression" eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex…. #EUArms /9
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Google Earth has updated its satellite imagery of many parts of Sudan. Looking over West Darfur city of El Geneina, I am shocked at the level of destruction. In some parts, whole areas have been destroyed and cleared. Location: 13.4469, 22.4151 (dates: April 2023 & March 2024)
The burn damage around El Geneina's specialised hospital is incredible.
It's not just the widespread burning of structures that we see in El Geneina, as a result of the ongoing violence in Sudan, but there are also clear indications of structures that have been removed, like these warehouses, located at 13.43324, 22.41364
This video, reportedly showing an Israeli woman kidnapped, beaten and taken into Gaza, was filmed from Al Shuja-iyyah St in Gaza at about 10am this morning.
Verification of the location can be confirmed through the location of the minaret in the background, white dome in the near ground, and then the angle of the orange roof in comparison to the street.
Location: 31.503462, 34.466569.
Shadows seen in the footage, indicate that the sun had to have been at a position to cast those shadows in line, or just off, the same angle as the street at 10am, or just before 10am.
Lots of smoke rising over the skyline of Khartoum today as clashes continue between RSF and SAF forces in different areas of the city.
People in Sudan have shared these flyers in a plea for help over what's happening with a water purification plant that services a lot of Khartoum with clean water.
It has been badly damaged and safe access needs to be granted to allow for repairs to be made to the plant.
The water treatment plant in Bahri appears to have been damaged in the initial wave of bombings in Khartoum. In satellite imagery on Google Earth from April 15 we can see a fire in the area, imagery from @planet on April 19 published by @hrw at least one building damaged.
The findings are based on data collected from Twitter and Telegram, looking at more than 1585 accounts and 480 channels and running follow up searches on numerous platforms.
Data was collected using keywords: Khokhols, Hohols and iterations used as anti-Ukrainian national slurs
The terms were selected given their prominence in Google Search trends. For example, the screenshot below shows the increase in the search of the term Khokhol which surged significantly after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Last week I spoke at @journalismfest on how open-source intelligence is used to combat propaganda and uncover new information during Russia's war on Ukraine. Thank you for having me.
I promised to share a list of links to tools and sources. Here it is (I hope it helps) 👇
I often share digital investigation skills, cases and sources at events to help remotely answer core questions such as:
WHERE & WHEN did it happen?
WHAT happened?
WHO is responsible?
And HOW can it be visualised?
So let's start with the case studies.
1: EyesonRussia.org - our community effort to document, verify and map Russia's invasion of Ukraine and share this info with the world.
This is a running thread of satellite imagery showing the destruction seen in Turkey and Syria in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes. #turkeyearthquake2023