Bellingcat
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Type of site | Investigative journalism |
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| Headquarters | , Netherlands[1] |
| Owner | Stichting Bellingcat[2] formerly: Brown Moses Media Ltd.[3][4] |
| Created by | Eliot Higgins |
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| Launched | 2014 |
Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT).[6] It was founded by British citizen journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014.[7]
Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.[8] In 2025, Bellingcat expanded operations to the United States.
Bellingcat began as an investigation into the use of weapons in the Syrian civil war. Its reports on the Russo-Ukrainian War (including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17), the El Junquito raid, the Yemeni Civil War, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, and the killing of civilians by the Cameroon Armed Forces have attracted international attention.[6]
Name
[edit]The name derives from the idiom "belling the cat", which comes from a medieval fable about mice who discuss how to make a cat harmless. One mouse suggests hooking a bell around the cat's neck, making it unable to move without being heard. All the mice support the idea, but none are willing to do it.[9][10]
History
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Eliot Higgins's interest in OSINT began in 2011, when he was arguing in comments of The Guardian and found out that it is possible to verify videos with satellite imagery.[17] In March 2012, he started a blog under the pseudonym "Brown Moses", named after a song by Frank Zappa,[18] through which he published his research into video footage of the Syrian Civil War.[19] He looked at hundreds of short clips on the Internet, localised them, and examined details of the weapons used. As a result, Higgins demonstrated that the Syrian regime was using cluster munitions and chemical weapons.[20][21] In 2013, Higgins linked the Ghouta chemical attack to Bashar al-Assad.[22]
Bellingcat's first major investigation, done mainly by volunteers without external funding,[23] concerned the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) in 2014. Their conclusion that Russia was responsible was later confirmed by the Dutch-led international joint investigation team (JIT), which stated in its 25 May 2018 report that the Russian military had shot down the aircraft using a Buk missile.[24] In other investigations using Google Earth, volunteer investigators working with Bellingcat said that they had discovered the coordinates of an Islamic State training camp, as well as the site where an American journalist was killed.[25][26]
Since 2018, the Bellingcat website has been operated by the Dutch Stichting Bellingcat.[2] meaning "Bellingcat Foundation" in English.[27][28] The organisation publishes guides on how to analyse data and create reports. Examples include "How to Scrape Interactive Geospatial Data" and "How to Identify Burnt Villages by Satellite Imagery".[29]
As of 2019[update], the organisation had sixteen[6] full-time staff plus Higgins, and at least 60 contributors.[29] Its office was previously located in Leicester;[29] in 2018, Bellingcat shifted its main office to Amsterdam as a result of the impending Brexit and concerns over staff recruitment and mobility.[30] Since 2021, Bellingcat has maintained a presence in a new Investigative Commons centre in Berlin, Germany.[30]
Funding and support
[edit]Higgins launched the beta version of the Bellingcat platform on 14 July 2014.[3][4][31] He raised £50,000 of private donations in the following month through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter,[32] performing additional crowdfunding in 2017.[23] Half of Bellingcat's funding comes from grants and donations; the remainder is generated by running workshops training people in the art of open-source investigation.[29][23]
Bellingcat has received grants from Civitates-EU,[33][34] Porticus the Brenninkmeijer family philanthropy, Adessium Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), PAX for Peace,[23][35] the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Digital News Initiative,[36][37][23] Zandstorm CV and Sigrid Rausing Trust.[36] Higgins has said much of the grant money does not directly fund investigations and is used for support services such as document translations and training.[23] Higgins told Polygraph.info that grants from the NED and OSF pay for Bellingcat programmes to help journalists and researchers in their investigations.[23] He said that most "funding from grants covers stuff that isn't related to investigating anything Russia related."[1][6][23][38][39]
Bellingcat received a €500,000 cash prize from the Nationale Postcode Loterij of The Netherlands; it used these funds to open a new office in The Hague in 2019.[40]
The Bellingcat website noted it receives financial contributions from various companies as well as special discounts and in-kind donations such as software access and platform resources.[36]
Notable cases
[edit]MH17
[edit]
On 17 July 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members died after the Boeing 777 was hit by a burst of "high-energy objects".[41]
In a press conference, Russian officials said Ukrainian forces had destroyed the flight and presented radar data, expert testimony and a satellite image. The radar data that showed another aircraft in the vicinity of MH17 was debunked as falling debris from MH17 by experts.
A man claiming to be a Spanish air traffic controller in Kyiv stated in interviews that two Ukrainian fighter jets followed the Malaysian plane. The Spanish embassy later said that there was no Spanish air traffic controller at either of Kyiv's airports. The satellite image showed an aircraft firing on the airliner but Bellingcat exposed the photo as a composite of Google images, with the Malaysian airline logo even being misplaced.[42]
On 9 November 2014, the Bellingcat MH17 investigation team published a report titled "MH17: Source of the Separatists' Buk". Based on evidence from open sources, primarily social media, the report links a Buk missile launcher that was filmed and photographed in eastern Ukraine on 17 July to the downing of the MH17 flight. The report, which included photographs and maps, details the movements of the Buk in eastern Ukraine on 17 July, evidence that the Buk originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia, along with a convoy headed towards the Ukrainian border, and the activity of the vehicles seen in the same convoy after 17 July.[43][non-primary source needed]
The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later made similar findings. The head of the Netherlands' National Crime Squad said they officially concluded that the missile that shot down MH17 "is from the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade from Kursk in the Russian Federation".[44]
In June 2015, Bellingcat published evidence that Russia had used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate satellite images of the MH17 disaster. Image forensics expert Jens Kriese of Germany said that Bellingcat's report used invalid methods to reach its conclusion.[45] In a follow-up report, Bellingcat published crowdfunded satellite imagery and further analysis that supported their claim.