Week-ending 8 January 2021
Bellingcat is an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT) founded by Eliot Higgins in 2014. This week the Russian independent news website Caucasian Knot reported that travel schedules of FSB operatives published by Bellingcat as part of the group’s investigation into the attempted assassination of Aleksei Navalny raised questions about possible links with the deaths of human rights defender Timur Kuashev in Kabardino-Balkaria in 2014 and activist Ruslan Magomedragimov in Dagestan in 2015. On 14 December 2020 Bellingcat published a groundbreaking investigation into the circumstances surrounding the attempted poisoning of Aleksei Navalny.
Sources:
Caucasian Knot, 4 January 2021: The law enforcers named in the journalistic investigation into the poisoning of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, had visited Kabardino-Balkaria and Dagestan when the human rights defender, Timur Kuashev, and the activist of the “Sadval” movement, Ruslan Magomedragimov, died there, as follows from the materials published by Khristo Grozev, a Bellingcat journalist. The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that opposition leader Alexei Navalny fell into a coma after being poisoned at the Omsk airport. He regained consciousness in Berlin, where he was taken for medical treatment. Alexei Navalny claimed that the Russian authorities initiated an attempt on his life. Mr Grozev has published data on the travels of the law enforcers named in the investigation into the assassination attempt on Navalny. “There are so many clues about potential new crimes apart from those already identified,” Khristo Grozev wrote on the Twitter. He has pointed out that the published materials have links to the death of Timur Kuashev: one of the law enforcers was in Nalchik in 2014 on the same days when Timur Kuashev died there. Another investigation figurant was in Dagestan in March 2015. Then, Ruslan Magomedragimov, an activist of the “Sadval” movement, was found dead there.
And on Twitter:
See also:
Bellingcat’s website.
‘FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning,’ Bellingcat, 14 December 2020
‘Timur Kuashev,’ Wikipedia
‘”Sadval” activist Ruslan Magomedragimov found dead in Dagestan,’ Caucasian Knot
