Visual Investigations

Turkey launched a military operation in northeastern Syria on October 9th, targeting US-backed Kurdish forces near the Turkish-Syrian border. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 8 of the 11 casualties caused by Turkish warplanes and artillery so far were civilians, not military personnel. Qamishlo, Syria-based journalist Baderkhan Ahmad tells the Investigative Journal about Turkey’s assault on northeastern Syria, including the shelling of his neighborhood and the death of one of his neighbors, a Syriac Christian woman. Ahmad and many others in his area were surprised by the scale of Turkey’s attack and had expected the international community to step in. “We are very worried for what will happen in my region in the next hours,” he said. “Of course, we still have hope, but the people here don’t trust what Trump is saying.”

TIJ journalists interview Mohamed Amrouni, age 23, a captured Islamic State member jailed in Syria for the past year and a half. He shifts nervously in his plastic chair in front of a camera as he expresses “deep regret. ” Award-winning TIJ journalist Lindsey Snell produces a story about his radicalization in his home country Tunisia in 2013 until his capture and sheds light on the saga around the fate of thousands of Islamic State fighters locked up in Syria and Iraq as ISIS loses ground. Lindsey Snell knows his family in Tunisia and kept in touch with him online despite his assertions then that he ‘loves’ killing Kufars–nonbelievers and that he would kill Snell too.

Abdullah Bozkurt, is a Turkish journalist for over 20 years, the president of the Stockholm Center for Freedom reveals a trove of secret documents that portray how Turkey illegally sent thousands of trucks loaded with heavy weapons and ammunition to jihadist groups fighting in Syria The loads were then transferred to tractor-trailer trucks at the secluded section of the capital’s airport, away from prying eyes. The trucks covered approximately 404 miles (650 kilometers) via the land route to deliver the arms to a pre-determined location near the border area, and from there was moved to destinations in Syria where waiting jihadist groups could use them.

Award-winning journalist and three-times best-selling author Richard Miniter exposes how in one of the largest state-sponsored computer hacks ever detected, Qatar’s proxies cyber-attacked more 1,400 high-status and ordinary citizens who were exercising their free-speech rights in democracies globally according to U.S. court filings, computer-forensic reports and expert testimonies.

The list also included: Sami Anan, Egypt’s former Chief of the General Staff of the Army; UAE diplomat Sheikh Maktoum Bin Bhutti al Maktoum; Saudi Arabian Minister of State for African Affairs Ahmed Kattan; American Rabbi Shmuley Boteach; and Kristin Wood, a former adviser at the CIA.

Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui, currently living in exile in Paris, explains how the Pakistani military abducted him before he escaped. He reveals shocking details about how Pakistan’s journalists are being threatened, harassed and even killed.

Ahmet S. Yayla is a 20-year veteran of counter-terrorism in the Turkish National Police and a professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies. He explains how Erdoğan’s government supported, financed and helped ISIS.