Bellingcat Weekly Newsletter
Thank you for subscribing to the weekly Bellingcat newsletter! Each Sunday, we compile a selection of stories published by Bellingcat during the previous week, along with links to our favorite examples of open source research around the web. Along with our published content, we will update our readers on events that our staff and contributors are involved with, such as noteworthy interviews and training workshops.
We will also have some themed content for each week - for today, it's the practice of open source research in Iraq.
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Open Source Research in Iraq
Syria likely garners more interest for open source research than any other country. However, numerous Iraqi media outlets have begun using open source research in investigations. Bellingcat has had the opportunity to provide training to some journalists working in Iraq over this year, including an event currently taking place in Kurdistan.
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Mustafa Habib and Shalaw Mohammed of Niqash investigate the impact of fake news on social media in relation to fighting in Iraq. Much of this fake news is meant to incite sectarian violence, with one person telling Niqash that "we fight this war with guns and with social media. Nothing scares our enemy more than these two things."
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The Iraqi Digital Investigation Team (IDIT), formed by the Berlin-based Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT), investigated reports that the Clock Church was destroyed by ISIS in Mosul. In April 2016, numerous international news organizations, including The Telegraph, reported on the destruction of this church. However, as the IDIT confirmed via numerous satellite images, only a part of the church was damaged, but it was still intact, despite international news reports.
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The Iraqi Digital Investigation Team (IDIT) did further investigation into the destruction caused by ISIS in Mosul, confirming reports that the Gate of Ninevah was indeed destroyed. The IDI Team used a number of sources to confirm the time, method and manner of the destruction, including; witness testimonies, video evidence posted on Facebook, ISIS photos documenting the incident, as well as several geolocation verification techniques to confirm the validity of the sources.
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With such a strong focus on so-called "fake news" in the U.S. following the 2016 Presidential election, we should look back to a story published in January on the impact of fake Facebook news in Iraq. This story, best read in tandem with the first linked article in this newsletter, details particular debunks conducted on fake photographs and falsely attributed videos. In one example, a photograph showing a fighter with the remains of a mortar in his arm was claimed to be, depending on which Iraqi news organization you were reading, a Peshmerga fighter... or an Iraqi army soldier... or a Shiite Muslim volunteer militiaman... or even an ISIS fighter. As it turns out, this man was not even Iraqi -- he was a Colombian soldier fighting against FARC in 2000.
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Announcements, Events, and
Media Appearances
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Two Bellingcat members are currently in northern Iraq to provide local journalists with open source training, which has been organised by MiCT. Hadi Al-Khatib and Christiaan Triebert are currently at NRT in Sulaymaniyah, and have already given training to two other media organisations, including Radio Al-Ghad, the only radiostation that broadcasts into IS-held Mosul. Bellingcat aims to increase trainings for journalists, analysts and human rights workers all around the world.
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Notable open source investigations from last week
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This week, a triple shooting took place in Finland, after a man killed two journalists and the chair of a town's city council. Even after the details of the event were known, a newly-created Twitter account tried to spread disinformation on the intent and victims of the shooting. What happened next?
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Earlier this week, a Russian hospital was shelled in Aleppo, with explosions filmed in both regime and rebel-controlled areas. The Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) geolocated the videos and confirmed the artillery strike, which killed two Russian nurses.
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Our resident Python wizard Justin Seitz provides instructions on how to do some automated open source research, with a step-by-step tutorial on writing scripts that scrape image metadata from archived webpages on archive.org.
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