Eliot Ward Higgins ( born January 1979 ) , who previously wrote under the pseudonym Brown Moses , is a British citizen journalist and former blogger , known for inaugurating open-sources and social media for investigations . He helped to investigate the Syrian Civil War , 2014 – 15 Russian military intervention in Ukraine , 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 . He is the founder of Bellingcat , a website for the citizen journalist to investigate current events using open-source information such as videos , maps and pictures
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17
Eliot Higgins