Detectives from US and Europe find 8 children deported from Ukraine by Russians

An international group of detectives led by the Dutch police and Europol has tracked the location of eight Ukrainian children deported by the Russians. They used open digital sources.

Six non-governmental organisations and about 60 detectives and investigators from 23 countries, among them Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK and the US, participated in the search operation.

Source: Dutch media outlet AD

Details: The operation was carried out in the Europol headquarters in The Hague. The group searched for the children using satellite images, face recognition systems and other digital methods.

Vincent Cillessen, the head of the International Crimes Department of the National Investigations Department of the Dutch police, said it was the first time such cooperation between international experts in the sector of open digital sources took place. They united their efforts for the first time to search for the information about the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

"We did not expect this first joint hackathon [an event during which different experts in the software development sector jointly work on solving a problem – ed.] to give results right away.

We wanted to learn from one another and exchange our skills but everyone adjusted very quickly. Taking the success into account, we want to do it more frequently, at least once a year," Cillessen explained.

The detectives looked for the data, which would help them track the exact location of the eight deported children, in open sources. They used extended face recognition in order to find the most recent images of the children, and geolocation experts detected the places where they were photographed.

The detectives state that eight kidnapped children are orphans, and that they were forcibly deported to the temporarily occupied territories and kept there for propaganda. For security reasons the information about the children was not disclosed but handed over to the Ukrainian authorities instead.

"We hope that Ukrainians will use this information somehow and bring these children back. But without knowing where these children are they cannot start this process," Cillessen said.

Previously: A young man suffering from diabetes kidnapped by the Russians was brought back to Ukraine from Crimea.

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