Thread by @bellingcat

In recent weeks, a video showing the apparent execution of Armenian POWs by Azerbaijani troops circulated on social media.

In this article, @mabl2k explains the methods Bellingcat used to confirm the location and time window.
bellingcat.com/news/2022/10/2…

@Mabl2K First posted on October 1, the video in question depicts men in military uniforms at a mountaintop position which they've just seized. Another group of men, who appear to have been captured and are wearing different military uniforms, are lined up without their weapons.

Seventeen seconds into the video, at least three men open fire at those who have been lined up and disarmed. Voices can be heard saying "don't shoot!" and then "stop shooting!" in the Azerbaijani language. The speaker cannot be seen.

These latest escalations on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border ended in another fragile ceasefire and, according to the International Crisis Group, were the deadliest since the second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. crisisgroup.org/europe-central…

Several posts circulated discussing an area around Lake Sev, located at Mount Mets Ishkhanasar, as a potential location for where this video was filmed. However, the coordinates did not appear to match with the footage.

https://twitter.com/armenia_empire/status/1576604537171103744

On October 3, the Libération journalists Alexandre Horn and Fabian Leboucq claimed to have geolocated the footage to a mountain ridge in Armenian territory on the border with Azerbaijan, south of the lake.

https://twitter.com/Alexandre_HRN/status/1576982719464361984

Bellingcat has been able to confirm the location of the video, which it was investigating at the same time as the @libe journalists.

@libe A message posted to a Telegram channel focusing on the Azerbaijani military on September 13 provided further clues. Bodies and objects seen in these images were identical to those seen on the execution video that would be published just over two weeks later.

@libe The images show what appears to be dead Armenian soldiers wearing the same clothing items and positioned in the same respective spots as seen in the video.

@libe By analysing one of the still images from Telegram, we noticed patterns in the terrain that seemed to be aligned with the position from where the photo was taken.

@libe Tracking a straight line between the location of that pattern in the terrain towards the direction of the camera, takes us to this area (39.5892778, 46.1873056) on top of a rocky hill here: google.com/maps/place/39%…

@libe By overlaying this projection with satellite imagery recently tasked by Bellingcat via Planet Labs Inc, we can see this location was disturbed by human activity.

@libe Other photos found online which depict this exact location also show that it contains the same rocky features seen in the graphic images and videos posted to Azerbaijani Telegram channels.

@libe The video reveals what appears to be a darkened area on the side of one of the hills in the background. We matched this dark area with a rocky patch on a peak northeast of the outpost at 39.599583, 46.193639.

@libe Overlaying Sentinel satellite images on top of Google Earth 3D terrain view, we noticed that scorch marks were already visible on this same hill by September 13 midday. But none of these seem to be on the video, potentially meaning that the incident took place before this time.

@libe Additionally, the still images of the deceased soldiers we found on Telegram and matched with the incident were already circulating on September 13 by 11:39 (local time). Note the timestamp.

@libe According to historical satellite imagery the outpost (marked in red below) was created between August 15 and 16, 2022. This suggests the location may only have been taken up by Armenian forces in the weeks before the incident.

A more precise time-window can be provided by looking at the sky in the footage.

We adjusted the contrast and colours of stitched footage frames to reveal a first approximation of the location of the sunrise which can be seen at the middle of the scattered light semi-circumference.

We overlapped this with a matching view extracted from PeakVisor and calibrated azimuth lines across the landscape to determine the position of the sun (80-84 degrees). This sunrise position corresponds to the first two weeks of September according to solar data.

At some point between September 12 and September 13 in the morning, satellite imagery shows that tracks appeared across the landscape through Azerbaijani territory towards the area of the incident. By September 16, these tracks had accessed the area where the footage was filmed.

But what do we know about the identity of the shooters? As mentioned earlier, the fact that a voice calls on them, in the Azerbaijani language, to stop shooting is a key clue.

At one point, one of the shooters' uniforms can be seen in detail. A comparison with military camouflage databases such as Camopedia yielded matches with two similar camouflage patterns of Turkish origin used by the Azerbaijani military in recent years.

When contacted for comment, the Press Service of Armenia’s MFA responded that they believed the Azerbaijani military to be responsible, but that the unit could not be confirmed as “camouflage of the military uniforms... have undergone significant changes in these past two years”.

Their Azerbaijani counterparts did not confirm or deny the involvement of Baku’s military in the video, stating that an investigation is ongoing.

Bellingcat continues to investigate videos from the Armenia-Azerbaijan border showing possible war crimes committed during the latest escalations.

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