Identification of Navalny’s poisoners, inventory of alleged war crimes in Ukraine… The digital investigation site Bellingcat has become “the Kremlin’s worst nightmare” in eight years, says its executive director, journalist Christo Grozev, in combating loopholes in international law.
Representative of a new form of journalism based on the analysis of data accessible to all online -Osint (“Open Source Intelligence” in English)- spoke this Monday in Paris before an audience of reporters in training or confirmed, invited by the School of Journalism SciencesPo.
“Nous étions incompétents, nous sommes devenus l’épouvantail”, declared the Bulgare for a summary of the evolution of Bellingcat after its creation in July 2014 by a British blogger, Eliot Higgins, entouré d’une bandes de “nerds”, passionnés d ‘Internet.
The independent group, made up of trainee researchers at its inception, quickly proved itself with its report on the crash of flight MH17, which killed 298 people in eastern Ukraine, already at war.
revelations
As of November 2014, the site accredits the thesis according to which the plane was shot down by a Russian missile from an area controlled by pro-Russian separatists, retracing, on the basis of photos, videos and public documents, the route of a Bouk launcher. of Kursk in Russia.
Since then, the platform, which takes its name from a fable in which some mice get together to hang a bell around a cat’s neck, has multiplied the revelations, in particular about the alleged involvement of Russian intelligence in the poisonings of the double agent Sergei Skripal or opponent Alexei Navalny.
“We investigate the war in Syria”, in Yemen, “in human rights violations by (the European police office) Europol, by Greece, Turkey, Hungary, in the extreme right in the United States, in Ukraine”, and in general in “governments that commit crimes because no one else investigates them”.
“International justice has a handicap: it is based on the idea that governments care about the well-being of their citizens,” believes Christo Grozev.
The International Criminal Court, which cannot judge States, only people, is criticized, for example, for its inefficiency, while the courts of democratic countries can hardly collaborate with authoritarian regimes to obtain information.
Hence the meticulous work carried out by Bellingcat, which has 18 full-time employees and around 30 collaborators around the world.
Financial cost and human cost
Regarding Ukraine, the platform is based on “two completely different and separate groups”, one for journalistic purposes and the other for judicial purposes, according to Christo Grozev.
The former, in particular, demines false information to determine, for example, “who bombed” a hospital or the authenticity of a video showing a prisoner of war being tortured.
The other, which lists alleged war crimes, nevertheless retains its data to finally transmit it to the International Criminal Court or to the “eleven countries” that “have initiated their own investigations on the principle of universal jurisdiction.”
Based in the Netherlands, Bellingcat is approximately 30% funded by the training it provides to various professionals, now excluding the police, who “sometimes use their methods to violate human rights”.
The rest comes from private donors, in particular a Dutch charity lottery, sensitive to the work done on the MH17 accident, which left Amsterdam.
The site no longer accepts “since last year money from governments” and in particular from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), financed by the US Congress, insists Christo Grozev.
The incessant search for the truth also has a “human cost,” warns the journalist, who is the target of anonymous threats “twice a month.”
But “the adrenaline, the feeling of doing what the justice system or the secret services do not do”, like “the thanks he receives every day from Russian citizens on the street”, makes him want to continue.
Source: BFM TV
