Shaya Laughlin

2 months ago | occrp.org | Hala Nouhad Nasreddine |Jana Barakat |Sana Sbouai |Shaya Laughlin

On September 17, a Syrian military intelligence branch fired off an urgent dispatch with troubling news: According to a local source, pagers used by the Syrian government’s ally Hezbollah had exploded in Lebanon. As the day unfolded, the messages kept coming. As officers struggled to gather intelligence, they relied on rumors and outdated information to make sense of the situation.

Feb 5, 2025 | occrp.org | Selma Mhaoud |Shaya Laughlin |Misha Gagarin

A Russian company with a history of selling grain from occupied areas of Ukraine exported over 20,000 tons of wheat that unloaded in Egypt last month after re-routing from Syria, documents obtained by OCCRP show. The company, Pallada LLC, had received small quantities of wheat from the occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia region during the two months before the cargo set off, the documents show.

Jan 30, 2025 | occrp.org | Ali Al ibrahim |Kevin Hall |Selma Mhaoud |Shaya Laughlin

Documents recovered from one of Syria’s former intelligence branches show how Bashar al Assad’s regime tracked foreign journalists as they entered the country to cover the civil war, including a long-missing American war correspondent. The documents mention Austin Tice, who disappeared while working for the Washington Post and the McClatchy news chain. The files do not list him as deceased. It’s an important distinction, because little is known about Tice’s disappearance.

Jan 7, 2025 | gijn.org | Mohammed Bassiki |Ali Al-Ibrahim |Selma Mhaoud |Shaya Laughlin

SIRAJ — a GIJN member — is a collective of journalists who have been publishing stories exposing corruption and human rights abuses under the Assad regime since 2019. But the GID documents show that the agency had concocted a sinister theory about them. “The mentioned platform is merely a front for espionage activities, gathering information and connecting (with) sources to collect intelligence about Syria’s military and security institutions at various levels,” one document reads.

Dec 26, 2024 | occrp.org | Ali Ibrahim |Selma Mhaoud |Shaya Laughlin |Mohamed Bassiki

Less than two months before the sudden collapse of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, it was business as usual at the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) — and that included spying on journalists. In particular, the intelligence agency was looking into Syrian Investigative Reporting for Accountability Journalism (SIRAJ), according to documents discovered at GID headquarters after rebel groups took power on December 8.