I decided to repost the English translation for the following source document written by journalist, Eric Van De Beek aspublished by De Andere Kranwhich Kit Klarenberg referenced in his investigative report, Ex-Bellingcat operative dies after child rape convictionwhich I shared earlier. One of my reasons for doing this is that I was only able to archive the original Dutch version which had already been saved a number of times.
Eric Van de Beek’s article provides a few more important details regarding the deep state cut-out that is Bellingcat along with the investigation into the downing of MH17 and Daniël Romein himself.
By Eric Van De Beek • April 1, 2025 • De Andere Krant
ILLUSTRATION: LEON BAAREN AKA THE ARTOONIST
YET ANOTHER SCANDAL SURROUNDING RESEARCH COLLECTIVE
A Bellingcat employee who investigated child pornography , among other things, was convicted in March 2022 of years of sexual abuse of his daughter. He had already been convicted fifteen years earlier for possession of child pornography. Just before Christmas 2022, he committed suicide. The employee, who wrote under the pseudonym Daniël Romein, was praised in the media for his contributions to the investigation into the MH17 disaster, although the Joint Investigation Team said it could do nothing with his findings .
“Daniël Romein died in his sleep on December 19 from cardiac arrest. He was 52 years old,” De Volkskrant reported in an obituary on February 16, 2023. The article was nothing but praise for the ex-Bellingcat employee. He had “played a key role ” in discovering the location from which the fatal missile that shot down flight MH17 was fired, journalist Robert van der Noordaa of De Groene told De Volkskrant. “ His contribution to tracking down the suspects who have since been convicted is of extraordinary significance.”
How Van der Noordaa, who described himself as “a good friend of Romein” came to this conclusion, is a mystery. It was not Romein, but blogger Peter Scheele of ukraine@war who, four days after the disaster, led journalists to the location that was later identified by the Joint Investigation Team as the launch site of the fatal missile. Romein also played no role in tracking down the three men who were later convicted of requesting, transporting and guarding the Buk air defense system that was said to have shot down MH17.
Romein believed he knew for sure who the men were who had formed the crew of the Buk and fired the fatal shot. In 2022, he had posted their names and portrait photos on Twitter, with the additional message that he had reported this to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT). In February 2023, two months after Romein's death, the JIT stated in its final report that on the basis of "this information (obtained from Romein, — ed.) and its own investigation findings ... no indication can be found for the involvement of these four persons in the downing of MH17".
Romein, whose real name is known to the author of this article, died at the age of 52. He committed suicide, says an acquaintance of his, who prefers not to be named. He died on December 19, 2022. The motive is most likely personal. On March 24 of that year, the District Court of The Hague sentenced him to 36 months in prison for abusing his daughter from the age of 6 to 10. The verdict, which only appeared online after De Andere Krant had inquired about it at the court, also states that Romein had been convicted fifteen years earlier for possession of child pornography. De Andere Krant spoke to Romein's mother. According to her, her son is innocent. There would have been a "witch hunt”. According to the court, however, the accusation of abuse was not only based on statements from Romein's daughter, but also on a letter he had sent her in which he expressed regret, and on his own statements. Thus, during his police interrogation, Romein admitted to having had intimate relations with his daughter. He explained this as a result of the “free upbringing” he had received.
Romein was not only involved in MH17 for Bellingcat, but also in the Stop Child Abuse initiative, a project by Interpol to combat child abuse. The international police organization shows objects on its website, such as curtains, furniture and clothing, that can be seen in the background of photos or videos of child abuse, in the hope that someone will recognize them and alert the police. Bellingcat has collaborated on this project. Articles about this on the Bellingcat website show that Romein actively contributed to it from 2018 to 2020. He is mentioned as the main author in two articles.
The question is whether Bellingcat knew about his conviction for child pornography, the criminal investigation into the abuse of his daughter and whether he was fired for that reason. Carlos Gonzales, who collaborated with Romein on a number of articles about Stop Child Abuse, did not respond to contact requests from De Andere Krant. Bellingcat management was also unavailable for comment. Van der Noordaa, author of De Groene, who considered Romein a good friend, said when asked that he knew nothing about his conviction. A scandal previously arose around Van der Noordaa when it emerged that he combined his journalistic work with work for NATO and the Ukrainian authorities. "It is clear that collaboration with a foreign power or NATO can undermine your credibility as an independent journalist," said Thomas Bruning, general secretary of the NVJ journalists' association.
Van der Noordaa accused MH17 researcher Max van der Werf of having spread disinformation about MH17 “on behalf of the Russian military intelligence service GRU”. He substantiated this claim by referring to an article on the Bellingcat website. However, this article nowhere claims that Van der Werff had contact with the GRU. Bellingcat also does not mention any examples of disinformation. Editor-in-chief Xandra Schutte of weekly magazine De Groene, which published Van der Noordaa’s article, refuses to rectify. Van der Werff tried to enforce a rectification via the Amsterdam District Court, but was rejected last month. De Groene is sponsored by Dutch billionaire Rob Defares, who also donates large sums to D66.
In 2019, Romein, together with Bellingcat colleagues Christo Grozev and Roman Dobrokhotov, won the Investigative Reporting Award of the European Press Prize for an article the three had written about the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Julia. In 2020, a Bellingcat article about child pornography by Romein and his colleagues Carlos Gonzales and Timmi Allen was nominated for the Innovation Award of the European Press Prize. The following year, however, the European Press Prize posted a statement on its website stating that the organisation had received “several substantiated complaints” about Romein from “several people”. The European Press Prize did not say which complaints these were or by whom they had been filed, but did say that they had stripped Romein of his prize for that reason.
Bellingcat scandals
It is not the first time that Bellingcat has been in the news. The German medium Junge Welt revealed that Bellingcat employee Timmi Allen was actually called Olaf Neitsch. There was a reason he had adopted a pseudonym. In a previous life, he worked for the Stasi, the feared secret service of the GDR.
Media personality and director of the Amsterdam debate center De Balie Yoeri Albrecht left the Supervisory Board of Bellingcat on July 1, 2023 after a video went viral in which he was seen attacking a journalist from the YouTube channel Left Laser and ripping the microphone out of his hand. He did this after the journalist asked him why Albrecht had a shot-up Russian tank parked in front of De Balie. Did this have anything to do with the fact that NATO was a “project sponsor” of De Balie, as stated on the debate center’s website? His attack on the journalist earned Albrecht a dressing down from the Dutch Association of Journalists. “Keep your hands off journalists,” tweeted general secretary Thomas Bruning.
Bulgarian Christo Grozev was a star in the Bellingcat firmament for many years. He rose to head of investigations and appeared in numerous interviews on Dutch TV and elsewhere. In 2023, he suddenly left. This happened after he was discredited for his involvement in a failed Ukrainian attempt to persuade Russian fighter pilots to defect to the enemy with their planes. Grozev was again discredited when, in an interview with Sky News, he justified the bombing of a café in St. Petersburg on April 2, 2023, in which a war reporter was killed and 30 others were injured. The American website The Grayzone reported that this had come to the attention of Leslie Aun of the American state agency National Endowment for Democracy, which has funded Bellingcat for years.
Essay on the self destruction of pornography:
https://open.substack.com/pub/soberchristiangentlemanpodcast/p/essay-hidden-dangers-of-pornography?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=31s3eo