The Murder of Pavlos Fyssas

The Iuventa has rescued over ten thousand people from the Mediterranean since it began operating in 2016. When the vessel was impounded by Italian authorities under suspicion of collusion with people smugglers, we used video evidence and meteorological data to refute the allegations.

On December 20, 2019, Chilean security forces used unprecedented amounts of tear gas within a relatively small area against people participating in a peaceful and unarmed demonstration. Using open source analysis and fluid dynamic simulations, we measured the concentration of tear gas in the air in that territory to estimate the scale of health risks inflicted on civilians that day.

On 6 November 1985, a guerrilla group known as M19 stormed the Palace of Justice in Bogotá, taking state officials and members of the Colombian Supreme Court hostage. Security forces initiated a counter-siege that lasted two days, leaving over a hundred dead and large parts of the building burned. Instead of focusing on what happened inside the Palace between the guerrillas and the military, a new visual investigation by FA and the Truth Commission examines the logistics of the military in their counterinsurgency operation and what happened to certain individuals once they left the building. -FA

Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside they are measurable objects, seen from within they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When ‘post-truth’ and denialism obscure acts of violence and compound the harm, we, the inhabitants of toxic clouds, must find new ways of resistance.

On April 6, 2006, Halit Yozgat was murdered by the National Socialist Underground at an Internet café in Kassel. State intelligence officer Andreas Temme was in the café around the same time. An architectural dissection of his police statement.

Along the coastline of the Gaza Strip, beneath layers of rubble, lies one of Palestine’s hidden treasures and one of the region’s most important archaeological sites. Repeated bombings, and the humanitarian disaster inflicted on Palestinian communities by the decades-long Israeli occupation and siege, as well as advancing coastal erosion and necessary development within the enforced densification of Gaza, have placed this unique site under existential threat. -FA

Since 2018, Forensic Architecture has been working with ‘synthetic images’-photorealistic digital renderings of 3D models-to train machine learning classifiers. Model Zoo includes a growing collection of 3D models of munitions and weapons, as well as the different classifiers trained to identify them making a catalogue of some of the most horrific weapons used in conflict today.

In late summer of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces battled pro-Russian separatists for control of the town of Ilovaisk, in the border region of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. By September, the separatists had won a resounding victory, routing the retreating Ukrainian army. Even as the battle was ongoing, however, allegations swirled that regular units of the Russian army had joined the battle on the side of the separatists, tipping the balance decisively in their favour. Russia denied the charges. But, in what became a watershed moment for open source investigation, communities of researchers, reporters, and citizen journalists gathered substantial and compelling open source evidence for the presence of the Russian military in the region. This video is a documentary piece that ventures both into the realms of science and politics (it’s part of the body of evidence submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in the form of an interactive platform).

Return to al-Ma’in chronicles the multiyear collaboration between Forensic Architecture (FA) and Palestinian historian and Nakba survivor Salman Abu Sitta on the reconstruction of his birthplace, the lost village of Ma’in Abu Sitta (or al-Ma’in). Guided by the work and memories of Abu Sitta, FA-researchers reconstructed al-Ma’in’s occupation by Israeli forces on 14 May 1948, its subsequent demolition, and the settlements constructed on its ruins. The movie looks to the present moment and the connections between Israeli military’s conduct and appropriation of Palestinian land during and after 1948, and today in Gaza. The project looks back at the sophistication and sensitivity with which the Abu Sitta family cultivated their land, and the rich agricultural diversity that was lost when Israeli settlements were subsequently constructed over this landscape.

On 4 August 2011, Mark Duggan was shot to death by police in Tottenham, north London, after undercover officers forced the minicab in which he was travelling to pull over. As the vehicle came to a stop, Duggan opened the rear door, and leapt out. Within seconds, an advancing officer known only by his codename, V53, had fired twice. V53 would later tell investigators that he saw a gun in Duggan’s hand, and felt his life to be in danger. But following the shooting, the gun in question was found around seven metres away from where Duggan had been shot, on a nearby patch of grass.

Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital, also known as M2, was subject to fourteen strikes by the Syrian military or its allies between June and December 2016, according to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). -FA

On Monday 15 January 2018, Venezuelan security forces raided a house on the outskirts of El Junquito, 20 kilometers west of Caracas. The target of what came to be known as ‘Operation Gideon’ was Óscar Pérez, the leader of a small rebel group acting against the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Nine people were killed, including Pérez and six other members of his group. All but one were found to have injuries consistent with being shot in the head. Two members of the Venezuelan armed forces were also killed. In order to understand the events that took place that day, FA and Bellingcat analysed material recorded by citizens, security forces, and by Pérez himself, as well as official statements, and leaked audio of police communications. -FA

Vaca Muerta, Argentina, is one of the world's largest shale oil and gas deposits, that deposit is also home to the indigenous Mapuche people. In 2013, a new deal saw U.S. energy giant Chevron (energy) enter Vaca Muerta, opening the region for the first time to the international oil and gas industry. In collaboration with The Guardian, FA investigated a local Mapuche community's claim that the oil and gas industry has damaged their ancestral land, eroded their traditional ways of life and irreversibly damaged the environment.

Building on Forensic Architecture’s previous investigation into herbicidal warfare and its effects on Palestinian farmers along the eastern perimeter of the occupied Gaza Strip, this investigation marks Land Day in Palestine by examining the systematic targeting of orchards and greenhouses by Israeli forces since October 2023. Our analysis reveals that this destruction is a widespread and deliberate act of ecocide that has exacerbated the ongoing catastrophic famine in Gaza and is part of a wider pattern of deliberately depriving Palestinians of critical resources for survival.

On 28 November 2015, Tahir Elçi, a prominent Kurdish human rights lawyer, was shot and killed during a press conference in the city of Diyarbakır, Turkey. Elçi’s death came during a time of rising tensions in the country, against the backdrop of the decades-long conflict between Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a militant political movement dedicated to achieving Kurdish autonomy in Turkey’s southeast. In 2016, the Diyarbakır Bar Association, of which Elçi was chairman at the time of his death, asked Forensic Architecture to examine the evidence in their possession, and to independently investigate the circumstances of his death. As Elçi was killed during a press conference, multiple cameras captured the moments leading up to his death. -FA

On the evening of 16 March 2017, a US drone strike targeted Sayidina Omar Ibn al-Khattab Mosque in al-Jinah, in Aleppo province, Syria. According to witnesses, the strike took place when close to three hundred people were in the building. Most were gathering for the night prayer, while others remained in the smaller ‘winter prayer hall’ where a religious seminar had just finished. The Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, claimed to have recovered the bodies of thirty-eight civilians, including five children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported forty-two dead. -FA