This past week @hrw visited a grave site in Tadamon, Damascus - a site we’d confirmed through geolocating a video over 2 years ago. The state of the site - with human remains scattered around - suggests that the area is a mass crime scene. Watch here: 1/6
We confirmed the mass grave’s exact location after verifying and geolocating a previously leaked video, taken in April 2013, showing summary executions by Syrian government forces and affiliated militia. 2/6

NEW @hrw report on Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza: The Digital Investigations Lab spent months analyzing sat imagery, social media posts, internet outage data, testimonies, videos + photos to document crimes against humanity. 1/17 hrw.org/node/389665 We unpacked the Israeli military’s evacuation order system between October 8 2023 and August 31 2024 and collected and analyzed 184 evacuation orders. These orders forced 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza to flee their homes and other places of refuge, often multiple times. 2/17

Today @hrw publishes its extensive report into the Oct 7 assault, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity by Palestinian armed groups. As part of the research we analysed over 280 photos and videos. This explainer describes how we took that on.
hrw.org/news/2024/07/1… Videos and photos taken by victims and perpetrators were essential in helping us establish the day’s timeline. In this case study, we use one video to show how we carefully used all the details available to establish the time of individual events.

https://x.com/hrw/status/1813430332814676474

Today, @hrw, @truth_hounds & @situ_research release new findings on Russia's devastation of Mariupol. These findings are based on extensive open-source research & interviews with hundreds of people between March 2022-Jan 2024. 1/10hrw.org/feature/russia… Due to the fighting & subsequent occupation of Mariupol, we were unable to conduct research there without endangering researchers/witnesses. Instead, we employed digital investigation research methods & conducted interviews outside of Mariupol or by phone

🧵1/8 Saudi border guards have killed at least 100s of Ethiopian migrants who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border in the last year. @hrw interviewed dozens of victims, verified >300 videos + analysed 100s of km2 of satellite imagery. Read: bit.ly/3soy8wg
This has been going on while Saudia Arabia has been investing in bringing global football stars to several of the football clubs it owns, purchasing Newcastle United Football Club, professional golf and more sports-washing of its image.

🧵Russia denied deploying the missile system used to kill at least 58 people at Kramatorsk station in April 2022. We @hrw and @situ_research painstakingly investigated over months; today we show that Russia had the system in range. This what we did: 1/11 hrw.org/video-photos/i… This investigation took months patiently pulling at threads. We spent days at the station, documenting 32 sites where submunitions exploded and spread fragmentation into the bodies of those waiting for evacuation – tearing off limbs, causing fatal wounds.

'The Hidden US War in Somalia' is a new report out today by @amnesty. We show that 14 civilians were killed and 8 injured in 5 of the more than 100 strikes in the past 2 years. This thread shows how we identified one strike with open source techniques bit.ly/AMNSM1 On 11 November 2017 three farmers from the village of Darusalaam, Ibrahim Siid Whehelow, Hassan Meyow Abkey + Ahmed Jeylani Sheekow, had been working in a field late into the night - finishing so late they rested there. At around 3am an airstrike hit and killed all three men.