When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets.

Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵
lighthousereports.com/investigation/… Mohammed Ghbeis was seized from an incubator in Damascus while only days old. By the time Mohammed’s mother Iman was able to see him in prison, he was a year old, taking his first steps. They couldn’t recognise each other.

Ghbeis archive: Mohammed Ghbeis newborn

The EU is facilitating a deadly deportation machine in Turkey that is sending 100s of thousands of Afghans back to the Taliban & Syrians to ongoing conflict

A new investigation from @LHreports & partners reveals millions of euros spent on a system of abuse and forced returns 🧵 We found refugees in Turkey are being rounded up on the street, locked up & abused & then forced to sign 'voluntary' return forms

& Europe is supporting this system at every stage
@el_pais, @derspiegel, @politico, @nrc, @lemondefr, @espressonline, @Etilaatroz, @SIRAJ_SYRIA

Tens of thousands of Black refugees & migrants are being rounded up across North Africa & dumped in the desert & remote areas, sometimes left for dead

These operations are secretly financed with European money, despite regional and EU denials 🧵 The EU has given 100s of millions of euros in “migration management” funding to Morocco, Tunisia & Mauritania

A year-long investigation reveals how this money facilitates a deadly system of mass arrests & displacements targeting people based on skin colour lighthousereports.com/investigation/…

What is France doing in return for UK cash to ‘stop the boats’?

Unseen footage obtained by @LHreports shows new aggressive campaign where French police carry out violent interceptions at sea – flooding & ramming into vessels & using pepper spray

Thread 🧵

The footage, plus leaked documents & testimonies - obtained with partners @lemondefr @ObserverUK @derspiegel - reveal French police have:
- Rammed into a dinghy at high speed
- Circled a dinghy, causing waves to flood it
- Punctured dinghies at sea, forcing people to swim ashore

EU border agency @Frontex have been sharing coordinates of refugee boats in the Central Med with a ‘pirate’ vessel run by a Libyan militia known for kidnap & torture. The cooperation with the group, which is linked to Wagner, is an apparent violation of international law The Tariq bin Zeyad militia has forcibly returned 1000+ refugees to Libya from the Central Med this year in a patrol vessel, also called TBZ. Refugee boats it intercepted were often first spotted by EU and Maltese surveillance aircraft & drones

The no. of people travelling through the Balkans to claim asylum in Europe hit its highest since 2015 last year – & the route is now more deadly

We've found that a growing number of bodies of those attempting the journey are piling up in morgues or being buried without a trace The Balkan route many thousands of refugees took in 2015 was largely open

But with help of EU & UK funding, fences have since been erected & security bolstered

This hasn't deterred people, it’s only pushed them to take more dangerous routes – on which some go missing & die

NEW: Hundreds of Afghan commandos who were trained & paid by the British for years have been left behind in Afghanistan by the UK

Our new investigation reveals that dozens have been targeted by the Taliban – and some killed

Thread🧵
lighthousereports.com/investigation/… There is little public information about their special forces units, known as the ‘Triples’, or their partnership with UK forces, set up by the UK in the 2000s

They became central to Britain’s fight against the Taliban over 2 decades

Following the West’s chaotic withdrawal from Kabul, Germany pledged it wouldn’t leave its local Afghan staff behind

But 2 years on, we reveal Germany has been rejecting pleas for evacuation from former employees – despite its own development agency assessing them to be at risk Thousands of Afghans were employed by Germany to implement development projects in Afghanistan

After the Taliban took control, the German govt promised at-risk local staff would be “brought to safety”

“We will not abandon our allies,” it said bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuel…

Greece is trying to cover up its role in the Pylos shipwreck which caused 100s of deaths on 13 June

Documents obtained by @LHreports & partners show the Greek coast guard went as far as tampering with official statements given by survivors The documents also reveal that one of the translators provided to survivors when they gave evidence was a member of the coast guard himself

Other translators were local residents who spoke Arabic & other languages & were hastily sworn in

Few Europeans have heard of it but there's a lobby group in Brussels that holds sway over the future of food, farms & nature. We dug deep into Copa-Cogeca to find a Brussels bully that's bleeding support among farmers 🧵 “We represent all 22m European farmers & their families,” boasts lobby group @CopaCogeca. @LHreports we set about contacting every listed member of the group across the EU to test this blanket claim that’s cited when they lobby against environmental reform.

When 94 people, including 35 children, drowned off the Italian coast in February, Italy said it would have launched a rescue mission had it known enough in time. @LHreports & partners uncover evidence showing Italy lied & @Frontex helped in a cover up Italy’s premier @GiorgiaMeloni insisted in the wake of the deaths by drowning & exposure that EU border agency Frontex hadn’t sent an emergency warning: “Do you think Italy could have saved the lives of 60+ people including some children and didn't?”

https://twitter.com/GiorgiaMeloni/status/1632115164718702592?s=20

In 2019 Robert a telco engineer in W Africa got an unusual request. Someone wanted to access his network. The man asking was Swiss tech entrepreneur Andreas Fink. He wasn’t from police or intelligence. “Hello Fink, what do you need the access for?” lighthousereports.com/investigation/… “To track suspects”. He would not be told why or who for. The message is a clue in a story that takes us across the globe from Switzerland to Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands & the Americas, exposing the new economy of privatised surveillance and one man’s role as its enabler

When civilians all over Europe were collecting money & goods for the Ukrainian war effort, an Estonian arms broker skimmed a 30% commission off a €6.8m deal to send anti-tank grenades to Kyiv. As found by a new investigation by @LHreports and partners on #UkraineArms As soon as Russia invaded Ukraine, the demand for weapons skyrocketed. Naturally prices rose sharply, the number of brokers hoping to make a quick profit soared and supply chains quickly became very complex. #UkraineArms

While tourists on ferries are sipping from their sundowners, people - including children - are chained & locked up below decks in dark places

@LHreports & partners has investigated illegal returns of refugees by Italy to Greece Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria & Iraq risk their lives stowing away on ferries bound for the Italian ports in the hope of claiming asylum

Instead, when caught by authorities, they are locked up on ferries & sent back to Greece without any procedure, in breach of interntnl law

This week we released footage of Bulgarian border forces shooting a Syrian refugee. They denied it. The EU’s called for an investigation

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Today we place it in a wider system at EU borders reliant on black sites, cages & torture

THREAD This is the cage where Abdullah, the 19yr old shooting victim revealed this week, was previously held in Bulgaria. He identified it from the video

@LHreports located the cage & found it being used to detain refugees before pushbacks like the one on Oct 3

https://twitter.com/LHreports/status/1599795979762356224

REVEALED: First ever footage of a refugee being shot at an EU border

@LHreports has obtained this shocking video where European border guards shoot a young Syrian refugee w/live ammunition at the Bulgaria-Turkey border

THREAD On 3 Oct this year, Abdullah Mohammed, 19, tried to enter Bulgaria in the hope of claiming asylum

His group was pushed back. Footage shows some of them throwing stones at the Bulgarian border in protest.

A shot rings out; Abdullah falls to the ground

NEW: Afghans promised resettlement by the UK nearly a year ago have suffered torture & death awaiting relocation

Not one person has been accepted & evacuated from Afghanistan under the Home Office scheme launched with such fanfare this Jan

THREAD The Afghan resettlement scheme (ACRS) was intended to help Afghans who worked for, or were affiliated with, UK govt – incl its embassy staff & British Council teachers

None of them have been helped. Over several months, we've been investigating the impact of this failure to act

A casual selfie aboard a Cessna led us to a private jet at the heart of Europe's spyware scandal. We used its flight history to plot the growth of a surveillance giant & reveal a secret deal with one of the world's worst militias lighthousereports.nl/investigation/… In partnership with Greece's @insidestory_gr & Israel's @Haaretz we spent months piecing together the business web of a rogue Israeli tycoon, stretching from scandals in Greece & Cyprus to a brutal contest for power in Sudan

On Jun 24 a group of people, mainly refugees from Sudan, tried to cross Africa's land border with Europe. What followed as they were caught between Spanish & Moroccan forces has been called a massacre. @LHreports & partners reconstructed a day of death & chaos As well as 77 people missing & 23 confirmed dead, key questions are unanswered: How did the tragedy unfold? Whose territory did people die on? Have Spain & Morocco told the truth? Our most ambitious visual investigation yet provides answers

In France we noticed how QAnon content creeps into the health-related information ecosystem. ‘Alliance humaine’ has its own “health and education” branch to connect patients with doctors & provide alternative medicine tips to treat covid symptoms French channel Alliance humaine’s preferred topics are international news, as shown by our data analysis: the assassination of the late Japanese Prime Minister, the use of ballistic intercontinental missiles, and the World Economic Forum are favorites

We’re thrilled to be a finalist for the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism for our investigation into the Europeans buying phosphates from the Syrian government and a sanctioned Russian oligarch daphnejournalismprize.eu @LHreports' War Winners newsroom worked w/ @SIRAJ_SYRIA @OCCRP @InvestigatorNik @riseprojectro @BivolBg @CINSerbia @irpinvestigates @Daraj_media for months to expose this murky trade benefiting war profiteers & sanctioned Putin cronies