Inside Bellingcat, the real-life investigative website that inspired dark Killing Eve storyline 2020 will be a pivotal year for Bellingcat

Those of you watching the new series of Killing Eve will have seen the dark fate of Kenny Stowton, a key character in the BBC’s hit spy drama until he took a job at Bitter Pill, an online investigative magazine. Kenny (played by Sean Delaney) was found dead on the ground beneath Bitter Pill’s high-rise office.

The real-life inspiration for Bitter Pill is Bellingcat, a remarkable organisation that is transforming investigative journalism by searching the internet’s vast trove of open-source video and data. Created in Leicester on a shoestring budget, it has relocated to The Hague, the “city of justice”, where it has dealings with the International Criminal Court, Europol and other institutions that wish to make use of the wealth of criminal evidence that sits online.

Unearthing crucial information

It was Bellingcat that unearthed the identities of the Russian agents accused of the Salisbury poisoning of former KGB man Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, shortly after those suspects appeared on Russian television claiming to be innocent tourists.

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The same website scoured the internet for the videos and pictures which enabled it to geolocate and identify a Russian rocket-launcher that brought down the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 in Ukraine in 2014 with the loss of 298 lives. Four leaders of pro-Russian militias are currently being tried for murder in a Dutch court.

The founder of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, is proud of the site’s role in the case, saying: “You had the joint investigation team pretty much agreeing with everything we have said on MH17.”

Most of the crash victims were Dutch and Bellingcat’s work on the case has made the Netherlands “a natural home” for the organisation, which began in Mr Higgins’s home and has expanded to around 20 staff. It has a supervisory board and Dutch charity status. It has appointed a business director to ensure financial stability. Transparency is vital for raising funding and for deflecting the slurs that it is a front for spooks.

Accusations of espionage backing

“We get all sorts of accusations about the millions and millions that we are getting from the CIA and all that stuff,” says Mr Higgins. The Russian embassy has, without evidence, described Bellingcat as a tool of the UK’s “deep establishment”. The site’s activities include archiving online videos of attacks in Syria, and documenting Saudi air strikes in Yemen as part of a project with Global Legal Action Network. The intention is for the material to be so transparently presented that it can be accepted by courts of law. Bellingcat has submitted material to the UK Government’s inquiry into arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

The Covid-19 pandemic presents particular problems for an organisation which makes 30 per cent of its income from hosting workshops on open-source investigations and has put 2,000 students through its courses. Funding also comes from family foundations, such as Porticus and Adessium. Obtaining such grants is not easy with the markets in flux.

“It’s a bit nerve-racking at the moment,” admits Mr Higgins, a former blogger and video game obsessive. But 2020 should be pivotal for Bellingcat, which has just been shortlisted for the European Press Prize for Innovation following its work in assisting Europol in geolocating incidents of child abuse by analysing the landscapes in photos.

‘With this Russian spy stuff it’s solid gold’

The website is about to undergo a major upgrade that will make its toolkit of search apps more available and mobilise volunteers to assist in online sleuthing. Following its award-winning podcast knitting together the story of its MH17 investigation, Bellingcat is crowd-funding two more series, one on extrajudicial killings in Africa and another on Russian espionage. “With this Russian spy stuff it’s solid gold. We have a lot of it and it’s still not out there,” says Mr Higgins.

After the Skripal case, Bellingcat published work by Christo Grozev highlighting a similar poison attack in Bulgaria and exposing the clandestine activities of Unit 29155 of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Mr Higgins claims to have access to “literally terabytes of information” on Russian spies.

Bellingcat’s relaunch has been delayed until June by the pandemic. It has thrown itself into exposing disinformation on coronavirus and begun investigating the rise of the far-right in Europe.

Aside from the BBC drama, this trailblazing website was the subject of an Emmy award-winning film, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, made by Dutch director Hans Pool. Mr Higgins wants Bellingcat to have its own film unit and hopes to turn the story of its MH17 investigation into a documentary.

Running a website like this doesn’t come without risks. Police have visited Mr Higgins at home to discuss his safety. The team’s emails have been subjected to sophisticated cyber attacks. The Killing Eve storyline about Kenny Stowton is not so fanciful, but Higgins is undaunted by the sniping and the threats. “It’s nice to know they still care,” he says.