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15 Jul, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Our partners @derspiegel reveal that Fabrice Leggeri, the head of Frontex, allegedly attempted to cover-up pushbacks happening in the Aegean Sea.

According to a new report by the European Parliament, Leggeri had incriminating evidence destroyed.

spiegel.de/ausland/geflue…
The report reveals that Leggeri personally handled the processing of a pushback which happened on 18-19 April, withholding information about it from the European Parliament and retrospectively classifying the incident in a way which bypassed Frontex’s fundamental rights officer.
According to internal emails, Leggeri instructed the fundamental rights officer to delete all information she had collected about the incident.

MEP @Tineke_Strik noted that “The action reveals that Leggeri does not hesitate to abuse his power to protect the Greek government”
The on-going scandal of pushbacks at the borders of Europe has seen vulnerable people seeking asylum, towed into the middle of the Aegean Sea by the Greek Coast Guard and then abandoned in life-rafts without any means of propulsion.

bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
We and our partners revealed Frontex’s complicity in these pushbacks last year, showing Frontex assets were repeatedly in the vicinity, or even appearing to enable, these pushbacks to take place.

bellingcat.com/news/2020/10/2…
The full report by the European Parliament's @EP_Justice can be read here:

groenlinks.nl/sites/groenlin…

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More from @bellingcat

Bellingcat Profile picture
6 Jul
Over the past year, Bellingcat’s Investigative Tech Team has begun creating its own open source research tools.

Now, the tech team is opening up to contributions from, and collaborations with, developers and open source investigators: bellingcat.com/resources/2021…
Open source investigations rely on the skills of human researchers. However, tools can help make the process significantly easier
Among the tools created by Bellingcat’s Investigative Tech Team so far are :

- A tool for finding Instagram "locations"
- An automatic video archiver for Google Sheets
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Read 10 tweets
Bellingcat Profile picture
1 Jul
In a matter of weeks, the term “White Boy Summer” has gone from a seemingly innocent, mainstream internet fad to a viral meme among neo-Nazis and white supremacists with potentially dangerous consequences

New from @IwriteOK and @hungrybowtie bellingcat.com/news/2021/07/0…
@IwriteOK @hungrybowtie The phrase ‘White Boy Summer’ originates from a viral Instagram video posted by the actor and rapper, Chet Hanks in March. There appears to be nothing racist or political about Hanks’ use of the phrase.

But the term has been adopted by the extreme far-right in the months since
@IwriteOK @hungrybowtie Versions of the far-right’s dark subversion of the WBS meme have traveled from 4chan and encrypted messaging service Telegram, to more popular social media apps like TikTok where Bellingcat found one video featuring Nazi iconography that had been viewed more than 10k times.
Read 12 tweets
Bellingcat Profile picture
24 Jun
Last week, new footage emerged of the Mahbere Dego massacre in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, on which we previously reported.

We have confirmed this new footage corresponds to the same event by matching features and people across the different videos bellingcat.com/news/2021/06/2…
The new footage contains the same features as the videos that we previously geolocated to two sites just south of Mahbere Dego.

These features include rock formations and a cliff edge.
The new footage also includes images of one of the captives seen in the original videos.

In the original videos, this man is seen in the custody of soldiers wearing army uniforms. In the new footage, the man is seen being executed by the soldiers and thrown off a cliff.
Read 7 tweets
Bellingcat Profile picture
22 Jun
Hugo Schultz, the former mayor of Chínipas, Mexico, was sentenced to eight years in prison last week over his involvement in the 2017 murder of the journalist, Miroslava Breach.
bellingcat.com/news/americas/…
In 2019, we helped a group of Mexican journalists called the Colectivo 23 de Marzo, @FbdnStories and @CLIP_AmericaLat follow the threads in Breach's work to uncover corruption and links between Schultz and drug traffickers.
@FbdnStories @CLIP_AmericaLat Last year, Juan Carlos Moreno Ochoa, a.k.a. "El Larry", a lieutenant with a drug trafficking organisation, was sentenced to 50 years in prison for ordering Breach's killing.

The trial court heard that Schultz threatened Breach over her investigations at the behest of El Larry.
Read 4 tweets
Bellingcat Profile picture
22 Jun
Today @ForensicArchi, in collaboration with @ECCHRBerlin, @yemeniarchive, @GLAN_LAW and @bellingcat have released a time-map of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Yemen, demonstrating the complicity of European arms manufacturers in the air campaign.

👉yemen.forensic-architecture.org
Combining information from multiple different organisations, this map is a collaborative visual representation of the results of an air campaign which has devastated Yemen, targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure, hospitals, cultural objects and water infrastructure.
Based primarily on open source information, the platform demonstrates how a digital ripple is created during extreme events like conflict; a kind of online memory that, just like human memory, will gradually fade and disappear unless it is preserved.
Read 4 tweets
Bellingcat Profile picture
10 Jun
With this week's investigation into the poisoning of Dmitry Bykov, Bellingcat has now published about 6 individuals followed by the FSB's assassination squad, 3 of which whom fell into comas while being followed, and 3 whom died under mysterious circumstances while being followed
The first investigation looked at the August 2020 poisoning of Alexey @Navalny, who was followed dozens of times by the FSB assassination squad before he fell into a coma in August 2020 bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
This investigation included @Navalny calling up one of the team identified by Bellingcat, and posing as an assistant to one of the team member's superiors, extracting detailed information on how the operation was executed from the hapless agent bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-eu…
Read 15 tweets

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