Searching for and Seizing Virtual Evidence of War Crimes in Ukraine

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has begun collecting incriminating evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. Virtual detectives join in putting evidence from social networks in a safe place to help guarantee that accountability.

as it happens in Syria since 2011, the Rohingya genocide since 2016, or even with the tragedy of MH17 (the Malaysian plane shot down in the east of Ukraine in 2014), the international wars and crimes of the 21st century are broadcast live on social networks, and each video and image constitutes proof and one more step towards the possibility of doing justice.

“A lot of visual information is coming out captured by people living in Ukraine, in villages that are being attacked by the Russians. Sometimes it is soldiers who record these images, others are security cameras, and all of this is filtered onto the internet through different platforms such as Twitter or Facebook”Explain Giancarlo Fiorellagroup researcher bellingcat.

Some of these images contain evidence of different types of crimes, including alleged war crimes, including the indiscriminate use of weapons against the population, and civilian infrastructure (houses, schools and hospitals).

Leaders like the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Ruttethey already urged “document well” the crimes in Ukraine so that the evidence “is duly registered” and it can “do justice”.

Thus, different journalists, volunteers and researchers monitor social networks with an eye on material that possibly constitutes evidence of war crimes: “We’re categorizing and archiving it to make sure that if the account that shared the photo is deleted or Twitter shuts down, we still have it.”Fiorella says.

That is in a public database and the ultimate goal is that with that material “verified and archived”at some point, be it “one year, five or ten years”some court as the CPI say: “We need to look for evidence of what happened in Ukraine And here’s a map that these folks at Bellingcat helped put together.”says the researcher.

But how to dodge propaganda? “In up to 99% of the cases, the images that are coming out of Ukraine are of Ukraine and of this conflict. There can be confusion sometimes as to whether the images are from Kiev or from a town half an hour from Kiev, or from this morning in Kharkov, or from the morning before.”details.

sam dubberleyfrom the digital research team at Human Rights Watch (HRW)), agree that “Not a lot of disinformation has been seen yet, there were some cases, but not many,” although he emphasizes that “in a war there is always misinformation and that has only worsened with social networks”.

“In a confusing situation, people make mistakes when they share the photo and write Kiev instead of the name of another town, but we are not seeing a lot of misinformation that is created to confuse, but mistakes that are totally understandable”adds Fiorella.

In fact, the difference with wars like the one in Syria is the awareness from the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine that the images can be verified and geolocated.

“There were people in Syria sharing photos that later reached Twitter or the news, but people did not know how to verify, what geolocation and metadata was, but now there are many more people who know how to do it and that is why there are so many working on it. theme”adds the Bellingcat researcher.

This work is vital. International crimes such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are complicated to prove, which makes every bit of evidence important to prove the will of the attacker, which is legally necessary to determine the type of crime.

HRW already detected what could be evidence “captured on video and photos” of the use of cluster bombs, bombing of cities and residential areas, and is “working to analyze this information and verify if it is what it seems to be, before publishing it”Dubberley noted.

It is about determining where the video was recorded (if it is a residential area, and if there are hospitals or schools nearby), and HRW is also working with people on the ground to better understand the situation.

“Through the use of this methodology -videos, satellite images and witness testimonies- rigorous evidence is assembled and misinformation is avoided”Dubberley added.

bellingcat and HRW They emphasize that the sentence on whether there are war crimes corresponds to justice, and that their job is to collect all the possible evidence that could serve to prove these alleged crimes.