Lighthouse Reports

24/11/2025

La police française prévoit d’utiliser des filets dans la Manche pour empêcher les bateaux de migrants d’atteindre les côtes anglaises.

C’est le dernier exemple de tactiques agressives utilisées par les autorités françaises, sous pression des Britanniques.

Au cours des dernières d’années, le nombre de mort n’a fait qu’augmenter dans la Manche. Ces tactiques n’ont pas réduit le nombre de traversées.

Lisez notre enquête dans et .independent

12/11/2025

This month on Backlight, Syrian journalists Bashar Deeb and Mais Katt share what it meant to return home and investigate one of the country’s biggest wounds: Syria’s Stolen Children.

Under the Assad regime, hundreds of Syrian children were hidden in orphanages to extort their parents. A major international charity knew, but kept silent.

Lighthouse editor Charlotte Alfred talks about the importance of cross-border collaborations like this in a newly free Syria.

🔗 Listen at the link in bio

16/06/2025

How Google, Amazon, Meta and thousands of other companies leave customers vulnerable over one-time codes to save time and money

Across the world, phone networks carry billions of passwords and login codes on a daily basis. Tech companies need to keep their subscribers logged in to their apps and accounts with maximum efficiency, wherever they might be. So these security codes need to get from Silicon Valley to everywhere, as quickly (and as cheaply) as possible. For most people they are a necessary annoyance, until they are breached with damaging consequences.

Companies, including banks and Big Tech, don’t send login codes to their customers directly. This would be costly and inefficient. Instead they rely on a sprawling and opaque network of contractors and subcontractors, each of which promises to shave off a part of the sending cost in return for market share. This is what the industry calls “lowest cost routing”. The catch is that any of these middleman companies can see everything transmitted. The codes that come saying “Do not share with anyone” might in fact already have been shared with more or less anyone.

How Google, Amazon, Meta and thousands of other companies leave customers vulnerable over one-time codes to save time and money

05/12/2024

Lighthouse Reports and partners revealed a year ago that Afghan commandos who served closely with the British, in units known as the Triples, had been left behind in Afghanistan, resulting in dozens being tortured and in some cases murdered by the Taliban. Following this, the UK government admitted it had made a mistake and pledged to review around 2,000 rejected cases under its Afghan relocation scheme of applicants with credible evidence of links to specialist units.

But nine months on, Lighthouse Reports, The Independent and Etilaat Roz have found that many former Triples are still waiting to hear from the UK government, and that military recruiters have meanwhile been circling with offers to fight for Russia in Ukraine or for Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East.

The recruitment effort is taking place in Iran, where many former Triples are now living after fleeing the Taliban. Some said they were approached for recruitment initially by contacts within the former Afghan army or security forces over the phone; others said Afghan people smugglers approached them in person. One former army doctor said he got as far as meeting Russians from the embassy in Iranian capital Tehran face-to-face about the recruitment.

Separately, we obtained evidence that Ryan Routh, the man charged with Donald Trump’s attempted assassination, had tried to encourage former Triples to fight for Ukraine against Russia days before he was charged with attempting to assassinate the now president-elect.

While all former Triples we spoke to have turned down the offers as they hold out hope of relocation to the UK, desperation is growing as the Iranian government cranks up pressure on Afghan refugees in the country. Mass deportations and new restrictions have left ex-commandos in fear of being sent back to Afghanistan and into the arms of Taliban, causing them to reconsider offers they had previously rejected.

Afghan special forces personnel in Iran left vulnerable to recruitment in Ukraine War after Britain abandons them

19/11/2024

Satellite imagery analysis reveals that the Kabul Municipality cleared over 1.5 million square metres of land in the Afghan capital between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2024, leaving thousands of families homeless.

The authorities say they are combating land grabbing, returning displaced communities to their homes and investing in infrastructure projects.

However interviews with residents, humanitarian organisations and urban planning experts reveal a darker side of the development efforts: homes bulldozed with children still inside and vulnerable communities paying the price.

Partners at the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project found a third of the total area of land demolished impacted informal settlements. Typically home to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and displaced Afghans returning from neighbouring countries, these settlements house some of Afghanistan’s poorest communities.

Outside of informal settlements, the investigation found large-scale residential demolitions appeared to be impacting areas that are predominantly home to ethnic minorities. For example, Police District 13, a predominantly Hazara district, lost the largest area of residential homes to demolitions since 2021 compared to other police districts in Kabul.

Mapping the Taliban’s demolitions: the darker side of their development drive

31/10/2024

In this episode of , Beatriz Ramalho da Silva and Tessa Pang talk to investigative reporters Tomas Statius and Elena DeBre. We cover:
- How to cultivate sources
- Three techniques on getting sources to talk
- Tips for new reporters

We talk about all this in the context of two of our latest investigations – the False Promises of Biometrics, that relied solely on source-based evidence to uncover a string of failed mega-deals that benefited DRC elites & left ordinary people with no proof of ID. And Poison PR, which exposed a US government funded campaign from a PR company to profile and target people trying to sound the alarm about the harms of pesticides and GMOs.

Essential skills and techniques on building sources and getting them to open up.

22/10/2024

“Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels … and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. They ain’t seen s**t yet. Wait until 2025.”

Tom Homan, the architect of Trump’s family separation policy and his former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is slated to return under a second Trump administration.

We investigated Homan’s dark money and charity organisations that are spreading propaganda about the US-Mexico border – and profiting from border disinformation.

Our new investigation in partnership Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, the The Texas Observer, Palabra and Puente News Collaborative exposes how these groups may be skirting federal tax law while laying the groundwork for challenges to the election results in November.

Ahead of the US election, the architect of Trump’s family separation policy – slated to return to office if Trump is re-elected – is using border disinformation to lay the groundwork for challenging the election results.