I.110 The Evros/Meriç River: A Century of Border Design
Date of Incident
1926 - 2025
Location
Evros/Meriç river, Greece/Turkey
Forums
Web Platform
In Partnership With
Self-Initiated
First drawn a century ago, the border that separates Greece from Turkey along the Evros/Meriç river at the EU’s southeastern frontier is deadlier and more opaque than ever. FA/Forensis built an interactive platform that unpacks this complex and lethal border infrastructure, and examines the present-day condition of the border against the transformation of the river landscape over the past century.
I.102 German Arms Exports to Israel
Date of Incident
07.10.2023 - Ongoing
Location
Germany, Israel, Palestine
Forums
Legal Process, Human Rights Report
Commissioned By
Self-Initiated
Despite widespread recognition of the growing risk of genocide in Gaza, Germany continues to offer military support to Israel through the supply of arms. Our report on past, current, and potential future arms export licences and deliveries from Germany to Israel supports an urgent application filed by Berlin-based lawyers on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza to stop all such exports.
I.95 The Pylos Shipwreck
Date of Incident
13.06 - 14.06.2023
Location
Mediterranean Sea, Greece
Forums
Media, Web Platform
Commissioned By
Self-Initiated
On 14 June 2023, a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank inside the Greek search and rescue zone in the Mediterranean Sea—the deadliest migrant shipwreck in recent history. Our digital reconstruction of the boat and mapping of its trajectory reveal inconsistencies in the Hellenic Coast Guard’s (HCG) account and indicate that over 600 people drowned as the result of a failed towing by the HCG.
I.1 A City Within a Building: The Mariupol Drama Theatre
Date of Incident
24.02 - 16.03.2022
Location
Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, Mariupol, Ukraine
Forums
Media
An FA-supported project by
The Center for Spatial Technologies (CST), Forensis
Before it was destroyed by a Russian airstrike, the Mariupol Theater was not only a key refuge in the besieged city but a unique site of solidarity and resistance. Working with Forensis and FA, the Center for Spatial Technologies assembled a vast archive of evidence and interviewed survivors of the strike to tell the story of a self-organised commune: a city within a building.
I.91 Fire in Moria Refugee Camp
Date of Incident
08.09.2020
Location
Lesvos, Greece
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By
Lawyers for the Moria 6
The fire which destroyed the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos was at least the 247th outbreak to have occurred in and around the overcrowded camp since 2013. Six young asylum seekers who came to be known as the 'Moria 6' were accused of arson and jailed. FA and Forensis reconstructed the fire’s spread, casting significant doubt on the basis for those convictions.
I.84 Drift-backs in the Aegean Sea
Date of Incident
March 2020 - Ongoing
Location
Aegean Sea
Forums
Legal Process, Human Rights Report, Media, Parliamentary Inquiry, Web Platform
In Partnership With
Forensis
Asylum seekers crossing the Aegean Sea are intercepted within Greek waters or arrested after they arrive on Greek shores, beaten, stripped of their possessions, and then forcefully loaded onto life rafts and left to drift back to the Turkish coast. FA/Forensis verified and mapped evidence for over 2000 such ‘drift-backs’, demonstrating the scale of this violent and illegal border defence practice.
I.82 Russian Strike on the Kyiv TV Tower
Date of Incident
01.03.2022
Location
Kyiv, Ukraine
Forums
Exhibition, Media
In Partnership With
The Center for Spatial Technologies (CST)
The Russian strike on the Kyiv TV tower and the site of Babyn Yar on 1 March 2022 resulted in civilian casualties and urban destruction—but it also pierced through layers of historical strata, exposing a history of violence, genocide and negation that unfolded on the very same ground. This is the first installation in a new long-term collaboration with the Center for Spatial Technologies.
I.78 Pushbacks Across the Evros/Meriç River: The Case of Parvin
Date of Incident
2020
Location
Evros/Meriç river, Greek-Turkish border
Forums
Legal Process, United Nations, Human Rights Report, Media
Commissioned By
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
At Europe’s southeastern river border, migrants report being beaten, detained, and illegally ‘pushed back’ to Turkey from Greece by unidentified masked men. Greek and EU authorities refuse to investigate. We worked with Parvin, a young woman from Iran, to analyse evidence she had gathered during her crossings and reconstruct her journey and experiences of ‘pushback’.
OSINT⤵
Open source intelligence or OSINT is information collected from publicly available sources. Common OSINT sources include social networks, online forums, corporate and governmental websites, blogs, videos, news reports, and publicly available satellite images.
Civil society investigators such as ourselves commonly do not have privileged access to classified information, making the information that is available from ‘open sources’ crucial in identifying and analysing human rights violations by states and militaries. Thus, every one of Forensic Architecture’s investigations involves aspects of OSINT.
While open source information is available to anyone, it’s not always easy to find, and open source investigators are required to use a wide variety of open source and proprietary research tools. Our partners and friends at Bellingcat maintain a live directory of such tools here.