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Eliot Higgins
Eliot Ward Higgins (born January 1979), who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations. He is the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. He has investigated incidents including the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.
Higgins was born in Shrewsbury, England, in January 1979. A high-school dropout, he attended Haberdashers' Adams Grammar School in Shropshire from 1990 to 1995.
He previously worked in finance and administration. In 2012, when Higgins began blogging about the Syrian civil war, he was unemployed and spent his days taking care of his child at home; his wife is Turkish. Higgins took the pseudonym Brown Moses from the Frank Zappa song "Brown Moses" on the album Thing-Fish.
Higgins' analyses of Syrian weapons, which began as a hobby out of his home in his spare time, are frequently cited by the press and human rights groups and have led to parliamentary discussion. His Brown Moses Blog began in March 2012 by covering the Syrian conflict. Higgins operates by monitoring over 450 YouTube channels daily looking for images of weapons and tracking when new types appear in the war, where, and with whom. According to Guardian reporter Matthew Weaver, Higgins has been "hailed as something of a pioneer" for his work. Higgins has no background or training in weapons and is entirely self-taught, saying that "Before the Arab spring I knew no more about weapons than the average Xbox owner. I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo."
Higgins began reporting on the use of improvised barrel bombs by the Syrian government in 2012, around the time their use was first reported.
Other aspects of the Syrian conflict uncovered and documented by Higgins include the use of cluster bombs in 2012, which the Syrian government denied using; the proliferation of shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles known as MANPADS; and the proliferation of Croatian-made weapons which was reportedly connected to the United States, a story later picked up by The New York Times. He has also investigated the Syrian regime's alleged use of chemical weapons, including the Ghouta chemical attack in detail. Higgins has also performed contract work for Human Rights Watch and Action on Armed Violence. Higgins' work on who was responsible for the sarin gas attacks in the Syrian civil war was criticised in a letter to the London Review of Books by Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former UN weapons inspector,[citation needed] Richard Lloyd.
Higgins used geolocation to publish an estimate of where the James Foley execution video was made outside Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in north-central Syria. Higgins used visual markers in stills from the video and his interpretation of satellite images of the terrain around Raqqa.
From 2016 until early 2019, Higgins was a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and Future Europe Initiative projects.[better source needed] In 2018 Higgins was a visiting research associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) at the Department of War Studies at King's College London and visiting research fellow at University of California Berkeley's Human Rights Center. In October of that year, Higgins was the subject of BBC Radio Four's programme Profile.
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Eliot Higgins
Eliot Ward Higgins (born January 1979), who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses, is a British citizen journalist and former blogger, known for using open sources and social media for investigations. He is the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence. He has investigated incidents including the Syrian Civil War, the Russo-Ukrainian War, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. He first gained mainstream media attention by identifying weapons in uploaded videos from the Syrian conflict.
Higgins was born in Shrewsbury, England, in January 1979. A high-school dropout, he attended Haberdashers' Adams Grammar School in Shropshire from 1990 to 1995.
He previously worked in finance and administration. In 2012, when Higgins began blogging about the Syrian civil war, he was unemployed and spent his days taking care of his child at home; his wife is Turkish. Higgins took the pseudonym Brown Moses from the Frank Zappa song "Brown Moses" on the album Thing-Fish.
Higgins' analyses of Syrian weapons, which began as a hobby out of his home in his spare time, are frequently cited by the press and human rights groups and have led to parliamentary discussion. His Brown Moses Blog began in March 2012 by covering the Syrian conflict. Higgins operates by monitoring over 450 YouTube channels daily looking for images of weapons and tracking when new types appear in the war, where, and with whom. According to Guardian reporter Matthew Weaver, Higgins has been "hailed as something of a pioneer" for his work. Higgins has no background or training in weapons and is entirely self-taught, saying that "Before the Arab spring I knew no more about weapons than the average Xbox owner. I had no knowledge beyond what I'd learned from Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo."
Higgins began reporting on the use of improvised barrel bombs by the Syrian government in 2012, around the time their use was first reported.
Other aspects of the Syrian conflict uncovered and documented by Higgins include the use of cluster bombs in 2012, which the Syrian government denied using; the proliferation of shoulder-launched heat-seeking missiles known as MANPADS; and the proliferation of Croatian-made weapons which was reportedly connected to the United States, a story later picked up by The New York Times. He has also investigated the Syrian regime's alleged use of chemical weapons, including the Ghouta chemical attack in detail. Higgins has also performed contract work for Human Rights Watch and Action on Armed Violence. Higgins' work on who was responsible for the sarin gas attacks in the Syrian civil war was criticised in a letter to the London Review of Books by Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former UN weapons inspector,[citation needed] Richard Lloyd.
Higgins used geolocation to publish an estimate of where the James Foley execution video was made outside Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in north-central Syria. Higgins used visual markers in stills from the video and his interpretation of satellite images of the terrain around Raqqa.
From 2016 until early 2019, Higgins was a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab and Future Europe Initiative projects.[better source needed] In 2018 Higgins was a visiting research associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) at the Department of War Studies at King's College London and visiting research fellow at University of California Berkeley's Human Rights Center. In October of that year, Higgins was the subject of BBC Radio Four's programme Profile.
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