Bellingcat

Sign up here to receive Bellingcat’s biggest investigations by email as soon as they are published. Illustration by Oisín Mac Con Iomaire On a June night in 1996, in a basement apartment in Boston’s Chinatown, a killer put a pistol to the back of a young man’s head and pulled the trigger. The victim’s body was wrapped in quilts, lowered into the trunk of a car and driven about 20 miles southwest of the city, where it was dumped in the woods.

A sanctioned vessel that was previously reported to have transported weapons destined for Russian mercenaries has been traversing ports on the west coast of Africa since March, exhibiting what experts told Bellingcat  was an unusual set of movements and behaviours. Patria (IMO: 9159921) has been sanctioned by the US, Ukraine and Canada.

Sign up here to receive Bellingcat’s biggest investigations by email as soon as they are published. Satellite images obtained and analysed by Bellingcat show over five miles of new road constructed in Big Bend National Park in southwestern Texas, part of a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “Smart Wall” installation, which includes roads, barriers, lighting and cameras. The project was paused earlier this week after pushback from local residents, politicians and environmental groups.

This article is the result of a collaboration with The Sunday Times. You can find their corresponding piece here. The Kinahan cartel, led by Christy Kinahan (centre) and his sons Christopher Jr (left) and Daniel (right), controls one of the most powerful transnational crime groups in the world from the Emirates.

Cristiano Ronaldo during Portugal’s losing game against Spain earlier this month. Source: Imagn Images via Reuters Connect Football fans wagered more than US $14 billion on the FIFA World Cup through prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi, a Bellingcat analysis has found.

Bellingcat has geolocated footage showing Shahed-136 type kamikaze drones in operation in Mali. Defence Blog and France 24 previously published reports that these drones were being deployed on the battlefield in northern Mali. But Bellingcat and Jeune Afrique subsequently verified two recent strikes using geolocation, satellite imagery and expert analysis to provide some of the clearest open-source evidence to date documenting their deployment.

This investigation is a collaboration between Bellingcat and New Zealand news site The Press. You can read The Press’ piece here. Content warning: This article discusses non-consensual sexually explicit content and child sexual abuse material. In 2024, a former track and field coach in Boston, Massachusetts, was sentenced to five years in jail for attempting to trick and extort more than 100 women, including student-athletes he coached, into sending him intimate photos.

Bellingcat has geolocated footage circulating on social media that appears to show coffins placed in newly dug trenches following the recent deadly earthquakes in Venezuela. The site identified extends over two hectares beside an existing cemetery in La Esperanza, a town near La Guaira on the country’s northern coast.

Warning: Includes graphic descriptions of animal harm and images of animal parts from the outset. A Bellingcat investigation has uncovered a Myanmar-based wildlife trafficker who has operated openly across social media for at least six years, claiming to have sold tiger bones, rhino horn, elephant skin and other products from protected and endangered species to customers in Myanmar, China and Thailand.

If you’ve seen reports of a wildfire in your region and you’re looking for open source data, NASA’s fire-tracking tool is often the first place to start. It provides a heat signature and an approximate location. But detection is only the first step in understanding what’s happened. In this guide, we explore ways to analyse and report on the scale and severity of wildfires, including those in protected areas where ecosystems are often most fragile.