![]() But when we started doing this work, because it’s using open source information, anyone can join in and look at it. I’m a very kind of online person, so I always had that community around me. But also, we’re part of a broader community that’s both kind of community of experts – you know, journalists, people work in NGOs, maybe military and arms experts, chemical weapons experts – but also members of the public who we connect to through social media. I mean, our investigations, you know, we might be 20 people in our staff, but there might be one or two people working on each investigation. So it’s like the Russia stuff – all these Russian poisoning are basically the work of one person who’s just really focused on this kind of evidence and working in that particular way on those stories. ![]() Although you’ve become experts in what you do, you’re not professional investigators are you? You’re not what people would traditionally think of when they think of an intelligence agency like the CIA or MI6.Įliot Higgins Yeah, we’re kind of just really keen amateurs who had hobbies get out of hand. We’ve published about the illegal wildlife trade in Dubai and a whole range of different subjects, in particular the far right in Europe and in the US.ĭaniel Bennett It’s a jaw-dropping spectrum of investigations. We’ve looked into things like border pushbacks by Frontex in the Mediterranean, which is now part of a EU investigation. And that then led us to the FSB domestic Russian intelligence team who tried to assassinate Navalny, the opposition leader in Russia, in August last year.Įliot Higgins And that’s led us to even more assassinations and attempted assassinations by the same FSB team, seemingly using the same nerve agents that were used in the Skripal poisonings and other poisonings in Europe. We’ve also identified Russia’s secret nerve agent program through that investigation. We’ve identified the real identities of the people involved with the Skripal assassinations, as well as other people involved with that assassination, another Russian intelligence assassinations in Europe. Other big stories have been looking at the use of chemical weapons in Syria. So that was kind of showing that Russia was involved with killing 298 people in this attack on this aircraft. But we figured out who they were based off the contents of the calls, and they turned out to be Russian military officers and intelligence officers along with other people. Then we started identifying individuals who were on phone calls published by the criminal investigation, the joint investigation team and by the Ukrainian security services who didn’t have names. We then identified the same missile launcher in a convoy in Russia a few weeks earlier that had headed to the Ukrainian border. ![]() But first of all, we tracked the missile launcher that was believed to have shot it down through eastern Ukraine through separatist-held territory to the launch site where the missile was believed to be launched from and found evidence that that was the place it was launched from. What are some of the kind of crucial pieces of evidence that you’ve been able to shine a light on over the last few years?Įliot Higgins So our first big investigation would have been into MH 17, which is really where our kind of investigation team formed, which is a group of volunteers, most of which have become staff now. ![]() ![]() I mean, this obviously people might be familiar with Flight MH 17. Daniel Bennett And so you you know, you say you’re involved in investigations, but I mean, you’ve broken huge stories over the past years. ![]()
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