When reports emerged that hundreds of people had been killed in an attack on a primary school in southern Iran, a small team of investigators rushed to social media.
It was the first day of the joint US-Israeli strikes, and misinformation began to spread online. Restrictions imposed by Iranian authorities made it dangerous for people who witnessed the strike to speak out.
That left the Human Rights Watch’s digital investigation team with the critical task of uncovering the facts and establishing the truth surrounding the attack.
The team of eight, which investigates war crimes worldwide, immediately got to work, painstakingly analysing every piece of digital evidence to reconstruct the events of what has been one of the deadliest incidents in the ongoing war in the Middle East.
From their offices in London, Berlin, Geneva, and California, they scoured social media for any footage or information they could find.
Over the next week, they spent hours verifying and analysing scores of videos and photographs recorded immediately after the strike or during search-and-rescue operations, as well as from funerals.
Satellite images from the past 25 years were reviewed by the team and compared to those captured following the attack. They showed both the site and the nearby cemetery where victims were apparently buried.
They revealed that at least eight structures across the compound had been directly struck by munitions, including at least one that had been hit and severely damaged the school.
Sophia Jones, who is part of the team, said: “A prompt and thorough investigation is needed into this attack, including if those responsible should have known that a school was there and that it would be full of children and their teachers before midday.”
A report was published a week later, which called for the US and Israel to immediately assess their responsibility and prosecute anyone responsible for war crimes.
What is the digital investigations lab?
The case is one of many for the team, whose work ranges from tracking down suspected criminals to analysing immigrant deportation patterns, using technology to investigate conflict violations and human rights abuses worldwide.
Dubbed the team’s digital investigations lab, the team uses social media, artificial intelligence, and satellite imagery to identify and hold perpetrators to account by documenting crimes and abuses.
Their work spans protests in Europe and conflicts in the Middle East to deaths in custody in El Salvador, as well as violence in countries including Burkina Faso, Sudan, and Myanmar.
The team was established a decade ago and investigations can take anywhere from days to years. Their findings are published reports, which expose wrongdoing and aim to put pressure on governments and policymakers to act.
Sam Dubberley, who directs the organisation’s technology, rights and investigations division, said the work is essential at a time of rapid misinformation.
“It’s definitely becoming a much faster space where human rights defenders are under a lot more pressure than they ever used to be,” he told The Independent.
How are they using technology?
The team is constantly across social media platforms, hunting for photos, videos, or audio of attacks, which they verify and fact-check.
They investigate military units, alleged perpetrators, or victims to determine who they are, what they have posted online, and whether there is evidence they were involved in a crime.
“People post videos that you think they never would, often in spaces where they think it’s not so public, like smaller Telegram groups,” Mr Dubberley explained.
One of their main tools is satellite imagery analysis, which is used to track the destruction of villages or sites. They painstrakingly reconstruct areas of attacks using 3D models to provide clear evidence of the before-and-after effects.
Artificial Intelligence is an essential part of their operations, helping them gather data from foreign government websites or mine data sets for patterns in arrest rates.
Earlier this month, they published a two-year-long report into civilian killings in Burkina Faso. The team used AI to uncover essential information and analyse nearly 40,000 posts, which exposed the activities of perpetrators at a scale that would have been impossible to cover otherwise.
Where are they working?
Digital tools have made it possible for the team to investigate alleged crimes everywhere, including in countries where they can’t enter, such as Russia, Iran, or Myanmar.
Mr Dubberley said: “Technology allows us to look over those walls that are being built, even in places like China. Looking over the Great Firewall, it’s very hard, it’s very difficult, it requires brave people, but it’s possible.”
Iran’s internet blackout has made it difficult for them to obtain and verify information, but they are still able to reach sources via WhatsApp, Telegram, and other social media. “People know technology is key for them to have their stories told,” Mr Dubberley added.
“We know that capturing their stories and verifying them is a really important way for us to do our work, and for us to achieve accountability and prevention.
“It’s important, of course, to investigate what’s going on in the Middle East right now. It’s important to investigate what’s going on in Ukraine, and we do that.
“But it’s also really important to make sure that we have the resources to investigate situations that are forgotten.”
What have they achieved?
One of their biggest achievements, Mr Dubberley said, was a 2023 report that found that Saudi border guards had killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border between 2022 and 2023.
The organisation was able to map the route used to cross the border thanks to geospatial and open-source researchers from the digital investigations team, who verified videos and images recorded by migrants and border residents.
Analysis of satellite imagery allowed them to assess the development of security infrastructure on the border and identify burial sites near migrant camps, which had grown considerably.
Following the report, the German Justice Ministry suspended its training programme for Saudi Arabian border guards.
“We got so many media hits, that was part of the strategy, to embarrass Saudi Arabia as much as anything else, to see if we could get the killings to at least slow down, and for a while at least, they did,” Mr Dubberley concluded.
