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Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Eliot Higgins
Founder and creative director of Bellingcat and director of Bellingcat Productions BV. Author of We Are Bellingcat. Neocon Antifa according to some.
Neal Rauhauser Profile picture Antone Johnson • @antone@sfba.social Profile picture never / ia Profile picture Birger Leth Profile picture Daniel O'Donnell Profile picture 54 added to My Authors
Jan 31 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
🧵Russia puts out a statement on the OPCW-IIT report on the Douma chemical attack. Interesting, as this is the first time they've made such specific allegations about what happened, and also because the OPCW-IIT addresses their points in the same report Russia is criticising: First, “In reality, falsifiers from the White Helmets brought these cylinders to the residential building.”
Sections 6.286 to 6.299 of the OPCW IIT report examines this claim and concludes the following:
Jan 30 • 16 tweets • 6 min read
At some point I should do a thread on how Russia's lawyers tried to attack Bellingcat's work and how I responded and won the argument. The Russian defense basically parroted what conspiracy theorists love to say about Bellingcat and open-source evidence and lost the case, so nice that's been settled in court rather than Twitter.
Jan 27 • 43 tweets • 15 min read
Those individuals involved with trying to deny and whitewash this war crime by the Syrian government should hang their heads in shame, but instead they'll double down on conspiracy theories and disinformation. One reliable feature of all these OPCW reports on Syrian chemical weapon use is the Syrian regime's refusal to offer any real cooperation with the OPCW, violating its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Rather telling.
Jan 25 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Would have preferred something substantial from the PM in response to the question on Prigozhin's legal action about me, sounded like waffle to me. For the record, I've heard nothing from the government about investigating this case, and I would have hoped if they were they would have let me know.
Jan 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This quote says it all, even though Prigozhin was trying to undermine Bellingcat's reputation by rebutting one of the articles we published on his Wagner connections, he still sued me directly in the UK for tweeting it rather than Netherlands based Bellingcat for publishing them. Image This legal action was revenge for Bellingcat's articles on Prigozhin being cited in EU sanctions against him. We were lucky his lawyers pulled out, otherwise it could have cost £100,000s to fight a case that is clearly illegitimate.
Dec 15, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Bellingcat Discord member Sepulco geolocated the video Elon Musk posted overnight, claiming to show a stalker, which he used to justify the banning of accounts that tracked flights. It's at 34.116175,-118.160635, not close to any airports.
google.com/maps/@34.11613… ImageImage Currently we only have Musk's word he was followed from an airport.
Nov 29, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
🧵US far-right extremist Rob Rundo, currently facing up to 10 years in prison in the US, has spent the last two years roaming around Europe, spreading his fascist claptrap to his idiot followers, and avoiding the law. We've tracked him down, time and time again, and now, again. Image Rundo is the co-founder of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), an American white supremacist gang that saw three of its members imprisoned for violence at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Next Spring he's due on trial in Los Angeles, but where is he? Image
Nov 28, 2022 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
🧵 In June, The Netherlands announced it had detained a Russian spy, posing as a Brazilian just as he was about to start work for the ICC. Sent back to Brazil, he ended up sentenced to 15 years for using fraudulent documents. Russia now claims he's a drug dealer, not a spy... In July, Russian investigators approached Brazilian authorities requesting the extradition of the jailed Russian, who they admitted was Sergey Cherkasov. Rather than Cherkasov being a spy, Russia claimed he was a hardened criminal, on the run from Russian authorities.
Nov 26, 2022 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
This week, a Russian couple living in Sweden for the past 20 years were arrested, with the husband detained under suspicion of working for the Russian intelligence services. @christogrozev did some digging and made some interesting discoveries about their neighbours in Moscow. The husband, wife and a family member were registered as owners of the flat in October 1999, located at Zorge street 36 in Moscow. It’s unclear if they ever lived in the apartment, as the couple moved to Sweden soon afterwards.
Nov 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This isn't 100% correct, Prigozhin had been talking about sending an "information case" to the European Parliament, and his press service just posted the "case" as sent to the Cyber Front Z Telegram channel, who posted the video of the "case" Image The "information case" was put together in response to the European Parliament apparently calling on Wagner to be recognised as a terrorist organisation. m.vk.com/wall-177427428… Image
Nov 23, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Government regulators:
Nov 18, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Twitter dying would be a really big blow to the open source investigation community. It really enabled a lot of sharing of information and collaboration that led to real impact. Bellingcat wouldn't have been able to build an audience without it. It allowed the audience to become participants in investigation and make contributions, big and small, that could make a real difference. It meant incidents that would have otherwise been ignored ended up being investigated.
Nov 17, 2022 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
The Dutch court at the #MH17 trial is detailing why they believe the conflict in Ukraine was an international conflict because of Russia's involvement, which is a good reminder that Russia's invasion of Ukraine really started 8 years ago, not 8 months. It was easy for Western policymakers and governments to accept this was an internal conflict to avoid confronting Russian aggression, but we're seeing the cost of that inaction now, not just to Ukraine, but to the whole world with energy and food crises.
Nov 15, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Worth noting the missile at the site in Poland looks like it could be an air defence missile, rather than a cruise missile. More images of the debris will help confirm that either way. The point being, the open source images of the munition debris should allow the munition to be eventually positively ID'd, so no need to jump to conclusions, the truth will out.
Nov 13, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Looking at the imagery from #Taksim it looks like there could be several dead around one central blast location. The exact location of the blast is here, outside Mango and Colin's on İstiklal Street:
goo.gl/maps/rr5gKtdSE…
Nov 8, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
If anything, adding a verified badge to accounts pushing disinformation on a large scale on behalf of state actors makes $8 per account extremely good value for money. In 2018 Twitter identified 3800 bots run by Russia's Internet Research Agency pushing election disinformation. The would be $30400 a month, along with a nice verified badge, which Musk has said will make the tweets from those accounts more visible.
techcrunch.com/2018/01/19/twi…
Nov 7, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Not a great sign one of Elon Musk's associates and reportedly part of his new team at Twitter is sharing content from the Grayzone boys. Uh oh
Nov 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Good No, we didn't. Usual great quality reporting from The Grayzone (who obviously didn't try to get a right of reply before publishing this accusation.)
Oct 25, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Russia uses footage claiming the bodies on the road in Bucha were laid out as journalists arrived in April, even though the bodies are clearly visible on satellite imagery from March. The usual shameless propaganda from the most shameless government on the planet. This is something that was clearly debunked way back in April by the New York Times, if anyone says the bodies were placed they're naked lying obvious liars nytimes.com/2022/04/04/wor…
Oct 24, 2022 • 20 tweets • 9 min read
Ever wonder how Russian cruise missiles find their way into Ukrainian playgrounds, power stations, and apartment buildings? Well thanks to @bellingcat’s @christogrozev wonder no more. It’s time to meet the team behind the targeting of Russian missiles on civilian infrastructure. Image Scourge of the Russian intelligence services, Christo Grozev, has spent the last several months piecing together the team responsible for programming Russian cruise missiles launched at targets in Ukraine, frequently hitting civilian infrastructure. Image
Oct 24, 2022 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
So to give you a sense of how full of shit the Russians are, the top left image on the first slide is from a Syrian film production of a movie about the White Helmets faking chemical attacks, stills from which Russia previously used in their propaganda.
bellingcat.com/news/mena/2018… Image Back in 2018 Russia 1 used production stills from the movie as evidence of the White Helmets faking attacks on civilians. You can find the production stills on the film's own Facebook page facebook.com/99314651083244… ImageImageImageImage