Words Without Truth: How the New York Times Helped Netanyahu Weaponize Sexual Violence Allegations Against the People of Gaza

October 7 Massacre in Israel, part 7: Words Without Truth

How the New York Times Helped Netanyahu Weaponize Sexual Violence Allegations Against the People of Gaza

January 22, 2024

1) A Propaganda & Genocide Assist from the NYT? 

This post will review the New York Times' December 28 article "‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7." By Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella, New York Times, December 28, 2023 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/28/world/middleeast/oct-7-attacks-hamas-israel-sexual-violence.html

I've been incredibly slow to decide this was worth finishing and then to assemble it even this well. I was originally content to leave it with the great works of Max Blumenthal and the Gray Zone, among others. But now I'll just start there; with some double-checking and other research of my own, some points and thoughts came up that I think improve the record. So this is a worthwhile read, if I've boiled it down well enough for you.

As the report's opening summary says "A two-month investigation by The Times uncovered painful new details, establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7." This seems to confirm Israeli officials who "say that everywhere Hamas terrorists struck — the rave, the military bases along the Gaza border and the kibbutzim — they brutalized women,"

First of all, even if every claim in this article were true, that would not provide any legitimate legal reason for Israel's current or planned genocide program(s) in Gaza or anywhere else (and it classes as genocide by at least some relevant definitions). The radical Netanyahu government and apparently the majority of Israel's populace seem to feel that the mass rape DOES explain their trajectory just fine; only the details of Hamas' alleged violence need to be considered in deciding the fate of Gaza and its 2 million inhabitants, because international law doesn't apply to Israel, as THE aggrieved victims of a brand new "Holocaust." 

Now that the Jewish state has been provoked ... should they kill some or all of Gaza's people, using bombs, hunger, thirst and disease, or maybe with a nuke, as some inside and outside the government have argued? Or should they simply threaten these in combination as the alternative to a massive "voluntary relocation?" Both notions are floated openly, with expulsion taken as the "logical" and "humane" option. Officially, no such genocide or ethnic cleansing is planned, but the "war" Israel has waged so far leaves these paths wide open by making Gaza essentially a living hell. 

Do Israeli settlements in Gaza return and then expand? Should they just settle the whole strip, and/or shorten the route of their hoped-for Ben Gurion Canal, running it right through Gaza? (see Eurasia Review) Do they take the West Bank too? Then on to the East Bank, into Lebanon, Syria and everything else "God promised them" long ago? It's all in happy discussion, after it was "proven" that - in particular - Israeli babies were beheaded and Israeli women were raped in the genocidal Palestinian incursion of October 7. (it does also count by SOME definitions, but Israelis insist if any one party is guilty of genocide - and they assume just one party CAN be guilty - then it must be Hamas, who they say DELIBERATELY killed babies, and who raped women.)

So the allegations offer no legal justification, but they drive Israelis anyway, and for the rest of us, the truth matters in its own ways. The main question we'll consider here is if the mass rape claims are true, at least judging by the provided evidence. The way it's piled up in the Times report, Hamas mass rape can seem pretty conclusive. But after sorting and considering ... the lodged claims have always been curiously short on supporting evidence, are often dubious or implausible, frequently change over time, and whenever there are enough specifics to compare with other evidence, the rape stories tend to clash with it, and to lose that clash. 

It remains all but impossible to prove a negative, like "rape did NOT happen," but the provided evidence FOR it has been seen to fail. So it seems likely the published stories were partly or entirely invented, probably in order to give Israel its supposed blank check for genocide and ethnic cleansing. This kind of allegation is akin to the "blood libel" long directed at Jews - incitement to communal hatred and perhaps to genocide. Those found guilty of such fabrications to fuel Nazi aggression and the Holocaust were certainly not tolerated by the civilized world, and found guilty of the crimes they encouraged and concealed (see the case of Hans Fritzsche). 

The Israelis would surely know what they're doing spreading such tales against the Palestinians as they set about re-writing Gaza's future. And Gettleman, Schwartz and Sella at the Times likely know what they're doing in assisting this effort, apparently having avoided any kind of second-checking or scrutiny as they essentially megaphoned Tel Aviv's hateful propaganda. 

Maybe they had a lucky break, journalistically, and the claims wound up being true anyway. Let's have a detailed check how likely that is.

2) Evidence Overview: No Medical, No Video - Just Words 

The Times heard from a government official about three women and one man who survived Hamas rape and were in counseling, but “None of them has been willing to come physically for treatment,” let alone to tell their story. After serious inducements to come forward with any story, true or false, this is all they even claim to have. 

Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel told the Times “Many people are looking for the golden evidence" of survivor testimony, but he urged "don’t put this pressure on this woman.” That's fair enough when the PROPER response would include "doubting (questioning) the (alleged) victim" anyway. 

Sulitzeanu says we can leave the survivors alone because “The corpses tell the story” and they tell it widely. But that story was generally not taken down before the bodies were buried. The severe lack of medical evidence has been widely noted. It's not just that images haven't been made public - in many cases, alleged abuses wind up lacking any documentation anywhere. The Times finds no differently, noting the Jewish religious imperative to bury the dead swiftly, and quoted "Moshe Fintzy, a deputy superintendent and senior spokesman of Israel’s national police, said, “We have zero autopsies, zero,” making an O with his right hand." They never did carefully figure out who was killed by Hamas' bullets, blades, or penises as opposed to weapons the IDF was using on the same battlefield. That could only complicate the crucial finding that Hamas killed them all.

And it seems there was an absolute and total failure to check for or against sexual assault. As the Times reported: "The Israeli police have acknowledged that, during the shock and confusion of Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israeli history, they were not focused on collecting semen samples from women’s bodies, requesting autopsies or closely examining crime scenes. At that moment, the authorities said, they were intent on repelling Hamas and identifying the dead."

A professor reminded the Times how “armed conflict is so chaotic” it's only natural that if the army is dropping bombs, the police forget how to collect evidence, or something like that. 

So negative findings were not risked, and the question of rape was left up to the public's imagination, and of course Israeli officials have tried to lead that imagination. They insist the rapes were real, massive, and systematic and that - despite the almost total lack of evidence - everybody knows that, so that anyone who pretends to have doubts is an antisemite who secretly rejoices in the mass rape of Israeli women and girls (and even men). 

Some of those who handled the bodies have reported consistent clues. Many of them are noted as unqualified to understand what they see, but some are quite imaginative, and get cited like experts in this report and before. Perhaps most prolific is "Captain Maayan," this time telling the Times how one woman had her fingernails pulled out. She and others have spoken of indirect evidence for especially brutal rape, like broken pelvises and legs. They don't say if the whole bodies were damaged like this, after being found in a tank-flattened house or a hellfire-ravaged car, or in the line of Hamas' explosive weaponry, but that seems likely enough. 

In a similar vein, "The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas," perhaps among other shots to every part of the body, or perhaps in the targeted way they suggest. Still, those were soldiers that, as we all know, Hamas executed at will. And that's still not quite rape. 

"The Times viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin." It seems quite possible the house collapse - likely after an IDF tank attack - is what drove nails into this part of her body and perhaps other parts, besides other random cruelties that occur when a house collapses on you. See the example image at right, (NOT the same image the Times saw) and consider how justified the caption would be. Likely all of it was called "torture" in the official investigation; Maybe "Hamas" tore off someone's right arm with a splintered and burning section of support beam, etc..

 

In this case, the Times reporter(s) seem to endorse this reading, having seen the image. But this reading differs from that of 2 rescuers describing what is most likely the same scene, despite the differences. If so, note the variance between the recorded and the remembered. 

A ZAKA rescuer saw with "professional eyes" a naked woman with a single "sharp object" stuck in "the intimate area of her body," along with "part of a ceiling" in "a building that was completely destroyed."  (https://twitter.com/MorHogeg/status/1729140621859049690) Another ZAKA rescuer reports "two women in Be'eri tied to beds, one with a knife in her vagina and her organs removed. After brutally violating these women, Hamas detonated the house on them, so we found them beneath a pile of stones." (MeToo unless you're a Jew - UnHerd) - (MarinaMedvin on X) - "One was sexually terrorised with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed," (BBC 12/5). A knife, some nails, whatever. It was some deliberate Hamas cruelty prior to the house collapse, which Hamas also engineered.

To their credit, the NYT did not include the allegation of some rescuers of a pregnant woman cut open so the terrorists could remove and execute her fetus before her eyes. That was an absolute crock with only the thinnest links to reality, as I established here on December 18. A December 5 BBC report had included it (but differentlty, with "her foetus stabbed while it was inside her.") noting "The BBC has not been able to independently verify this account, and Israeli media reports have questioned some testimony from volunteers working in the traumatic aftermath of the Hamas attacks."

The Times report also noted "Some emergency medical workers now wish they had documented more of what they saw," to bolster their outlandish descriptions. Their "deep respect for the dead" is cited for failing to do so, and also “we are not allowed to take pictures,” as ZAKA southern operations director Yossi Landau said, explaining why he didn't take any. “In retrospect, I regret it.” Others were seemingly allowed, but say they just didn't have the time (see "G" below), or they refused to photograph the evidence because of "personal limits" (Col. Golan Vach, referring to charred and beheaded baby he swears he saw in Be'eri). Any combination of these reasons is sure to explain why they almost never have any visual evidence. 

Widespread, systematic rape as alleged would likely be captured on video in at least a few cases, when Hamas body cameras, common dashboard cameras, security cameras and mobile phones were all widely in play, and used to document quite a few real acts of violence. As the Times report "The Israeli authorities have no shortage of video evidence" from all these sources "showing Hamas terrorists killing civilians and many images of mutilated bodies." If they had ANY footage of a rape or related activities occurring, that's the place it should be mentioned. But it seems even from this large catalog, carefully scrutinized, no such footage was located. I'm not saying this stuff never happened, just that it seemingly never happened in front of a camera anywhere, which is strange in light of the alleged scale of the abuse.

There has been imagery cited as indirect evidence for rape, with at least 3 scenes apparently included in Israel's 43-minute private-screening atrocity video. As I reviewed that in part 4, these scenes were:

* relevant / inconclusive (bloody pants can have a few causes)

* irrelevant / fake (recycled photo of a killed Kurdish fighter - adding BBC 12/5 seems to mention this scene as genuine ("women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side"), shortly after it had been exposed and removed from the Israeli-run Hamas-Massacre.net website and apparently from the IDF's 43-minute video, whereas Jewish News editor Jotam Confino describes it clearly enough as included back in late October ("on the grass" "her panties taken half off"))

* relevant / even worse (a possible Apache helicopter victim, re-posed hours after death to suggest rape).

The latter became central to this Times report as "the woman in the black dress," now identified as Gal Abdush. That story has been central for me as well, but decentralized in coverage - see section 5 below, linking to an earlier post I had included her in. I hope to assemble a dedicated review post, especially now that the alleged rape victim's family is complaining about the Times' part in spreading a bloated myth. They should be better informed than the reporters, and they had no reason to suspect Gal had been raped, until the reporters convinced some of them, then pretended it was the other way around, citing the family as further evidence for rape. Others remain unconvinced and feel misled; Gal's sister Miral Alter put it: "If we knew that it was a headline like rape slaughter, we would never agree. Never.” 

But first, some consideration of two other lines of evidence that were central to the Times report: 

- two pairs of direct (alleged) witnesses (each containing a "security consultant") claiming to have seen rape, murder and mutilation at the rave, and 

- a military paramedic who says he saw 2 teenage sisters who had clearly been raped.

 

Noting that military members and "security consultants" are especially likely to assist in a state-sponsored coverup and propaganda operation, it should be little surprise that their shifting stories clash with the more credible evidence, and of course none of them has a single image to back up any of it. 

3) The "Security Consultant" Witnesses to Rapes at the Rave 

3A) Four Witnesses with Two (Final) Stories

The Times relied heavily on two alleged witnesses, each backed with a more B-list co-witness,  to the rape, murder, torture and mutilation of several young women fleeing the Nova music festival, along highway 232. 

Raz Cohen is "a young Israeli who had also attended the rave and had worked recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo training Congolese soldiers," as the Times notes. Picture caption: "Raz Cohen, a security consultant, survived the Oct. 7 attacks by hiding in a dried-up streambed."  - elsewhere he's noted as "a discharged officer from the Maglan Patrol," an elite reconnaissance unit. (kan.org.il Dec. 14) It's unclear why he was discharged - perhaps partying and drugs.

The Times heard from Cohen in "an hour-and-a-half interview in a Tel Aviv restaurant." He claims he hid in a dry riverbed "along Route 232 ... about a mile southwest of the party area," when he witnessed five Palestinian men in civilian clothes in a white van, "all carrying knives and one carrying a hammer" pull up "maybe 40 yards in front of him." Cohen says he watched the men drag a "young, naked and screaming" woman across the ground to a spot where they gathered. “She’s standing up," he recalled. "They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. ... Then one of them raises a knife,” he said, “and they just slaughtered her.” The Times let Cohen provide the article's title, from his poetic line: "I still remember her voice, screams without words.” 

Hiding along with Raz was "Shoam Gueta, one of Mr. Cohen’s friends and a fashion designer" who also spoke with the Times, with a more vague version of the same story. He says the attackers were “talking, giggling and shouting” as they assaulted the woman, "and that one of them stabbed her with a knife repeatedly, “literally butchering her.”" FWIW Gueta might be the one who designed Cohen's cloak for an October 7 propaganda fashion show. (https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1741364790407180448) 

Raz Cohen gets the purpose of these stories and the motive why he might exaggerate or invent one: he said in one interview to Israeli media he plans to re-enlist in the IDF to join the fight in Gaza or wherever, because "I need revenge, to live with myself" after allegedly witnessing those horrors, and being unable to stop or document them. "After this" - including the unsupported story he tells - "Gaza [will] not continue to be [on] the map."

https://twitter.com/Wahb_Allat/status/1712070021999165825

"Sapir," a 24-year-old accountant, "has become one of the Israeli police’s key witnesses," the Times reported. Her name full name is withheld for fear of "hounding." She sounds easy to dox, and perhaps eager for it, thinking herself well-poised for a profile-raising lawsuit. She gave the Times "a two-hour interview outside a cafe in southern Israel" 

Around 8 a.m., Sapir says, "she was hiding under the low branches of a bushy tamarisk tree, just off Route 232, about four miles southwest of the party." From there she saw "groups of heavily armed gunmen" - around 100 in total, some seeming military and some civilian, "rape and kill at least five women" as the Times put it. In the report itself, she describes seeing just two women raped and killed, three others raped but not killed (that she saw), and 3 more perhaps raped, and killed out of her view - she claims she just saw their severed heads. That's for a total of 8 victims spoken of. 

"Yura Karol, a 22-year-old security consultant, said he was hiding in the same spot, and he can be seen in one of Sapir’s photos." He relates the same basic story in a more second-hand way.

Some the twisted details told by Sapir: First rape: "One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back." Then she claims to have seen "another woman “shredded into pieces.”  While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast," and started a game of toss-the-severed-breast just for fun, as the rape continued. She says they sliced her face, and then the victim "fell out of view" - likely executed, but she didn't claim to see. "Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women," killed barbarically after what crimes she could only imagine. 

Just from Sapir's amazing spot, she claims to have witnessed 5+ rapes, 5+ murders, including 3+ beheaded women. As noted above, there are reportedly four rape survivors identified in the whole massacre. There are still zero rapes among the dead actually proven from all that physical evidence Israel had access to. And there are still zero beheaded women actually verified, identified, visually documented or credibly reported. She saw more than everyone else combined! She does suggest it was an unusual spot in this regard: “It was like an assembly point.” And if fighters and civilian rapists knew to congregate their crimes here for Sapir and Yura to see, that might go to show the whole thing was systematic, a planned part of Hamas' campaign of genocide.

In fact, the police have specified that they do NOT have the supporting evidence: According to Mondoweiss, Haaretz reported that “investigators were unable to identify the women who, according to the testimony of [Sapir] and other eyewitnesses, were raped and murdered.” Israeli Police Superintendent Adi Edry told the paper, “I have circumstantial evidence, but ultimately my duty is to find evidence that supports her testimony and to find the victims’ identity. At this stage I don’t have those specific corpses.” (Family of key case in New York Times October 7 sexual violence report renounces story, says reporters manipulated them – Mondoweiss)

So there's no evidence past the words of Sapir and Yura, when there probably should be some. But it was good enough for the New York friggin' Times. 

3B) 4 Witnesses, Zero Visual Evidence 

Both Raz Cohen and Sapir are said to have visually proven their presence at the rave, or along Route 232 north or south of it, during the chaotic efforts to flee. That had become an issue after prolific alleged witness Niko Ostroga was found to have fabricated his presence to witness the killing of 29 friends. (Max Blumenthal on X (twitter.com)) Both witnesses also had a second witness to claim hiding with them to corroborate their stories. But all four of them failed to record - by video, still images, audio, or any form - the rapes they claim to have seen in broad daylight. 

Raz Cohen posted this image of him smiling as he hid from Hamas gunmen in a dry riverbed (on the left, with perhaps Gueta on the right - via Max B. on X - text added by me). This photo could be posed in any old "wadi" (as the Arabs call them), but it's likely enough he was at the rave and this is him hiding, just feeling in no immediate danger. But of course, he posted no image of himself frowning after witnessing a horrific rape, and of course, he posted and presumably took no recording of the event.

"Sapir," as the Times reports, "provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw." But of course, she had no video of what she saw to prove one bit of the elaborate butchery she reports. She even specifies that she relied only on her eyes and/or imagination: "I looked at all this as if I was photographing them with my eyes, not forgetting any detail. I told myself: I should remember everything." And then she would need to insist that everyone believes those are actual memories, and maybe scream antisemitism if anyone doubts her.

Her co-witness "Yura Karol ... said he barely lifted his head to look at the road but he also described seeing a woman raped and killed." He too had no footage that's mentioned. He could lift his head, "barely," but his camera, not at all.

There are legitimate reasons these four people might all fail to record the events they actually witnessed. But mainly this comes down to the increased danger of being spotted with a raised camera. But the same issue applies to raising their eyes to see, and that was allegedly no problem. 

Furthermore, Cohen and perhaps Karol - as "security consultants" with some military training - might know better than most how to covertly film something without being spotted. Cohen was with the Maglan Unit 212 a reconnaissance unit of the IDF, which "specializes in operating behind enemy lines and deep in enemy territory using advanced technologies and weaponry." Maglan means Ibis, "a bird that knows how to adapt in every situation." Maglan - Wikipedia With the confidence of his training, he was able to take a smiling selfie and some other brief video, and to keep his head and eyes high enough to witness a Hamas rape. But he couldn't figure out how his camera lens could join his eyes there? 

They probably failed to record these rapes because there was nothing to film. They didn't even think to claim or stage anything, probably, because the whole idea emerged later. Either way, it was good enough for New York friggin' Times.

3C) 4 Witnesses with Changing Stories

If any of these people had witnessed these crimes, they would also likely mention them in their emergency calls, which would likely be recorded and might be released as proof. But so far, I'm not aware of any such evidence emerging. Did they fail to report these crimes as well as failing to document them? 

They might mention the crimes in the media interviews, and of course they have. But there are troubling discrepancies. 

The Gray Zone noted how, on Nov. 8th, an unnamed woman told Haaretz she saw just one rape: victim bent over, killed by a shot to the head, and then mutilated. Her unnamed friend “didn’t see the rape,” but heard it and had the visuals described. (https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/10/questions-nyt-hamas-rape-report/) This is almost certain to be "Sapir" and Yura Karol. BBC, Dec. 5, were shown video of an interview with "witness S" who still describes just one rape victim: "S mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another. ... the men cut off parts of the victim's body during the assault. "They sliced her breast and threw it on the street," she says. "They were playing with it." Then "The victim was passed to another man in uniform, she continues. "He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn't even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates." A few weeks later to the Times, Sapir seems to add a second rape-murder, moving the mastectomy but not the execution to this second victim, and seems to add 3 more rapes, 3 severed heads, more stabbing, and no mention of shooting. Or maybe she just didn't mention those details at first. 

And as the Gray Zone noted, Yura (or the similar co-witness of "S") said in November that he "didn't see the rape" but only heard it. Dy late December he “described seeing a woman raped and killed.” 

Raz Cohen's first media interviews - like his Instagram photo - fail to reflect his most powerful claims. A compilation video by My Lord Bebo on X remains useful; in 4 interviews published October 9 - at least the shared portions - he recalls hiding under the stage and then in the wadi, and seeing people killed including with knives, prior to the army showing up and killing no one that he mentions. (but in one interview, he seem abnormally concerned with or distracted by a helicopter flying nearby.) Nothing related to rape is mentioned. Then on the 10th Cohen gave an interview to PBS News Hour where he suddenly mentions the rape-murder in detail, and it was a main feature of all later interviews. 

The clear impression is he decided or was compelled to add this detail for some reason. 

The Gray Zone's "Screams Without Proof" article took this line, only to learn that it did come up on the first day - but just once, and apparently mentioned off-camera, as related by the reporter, Ariel Oseran. Author Max Blumenthal on X issued an update after seeing the fuller broadcast (from i24) including Oseran's attached "second-hand summary of comments Cohen supplied to him after bolting the interview for "emotional support" at Barzalai Hospital in Ashkelon. According to Oseran, while hiding from infiltrators from Gaza, Cohen claimed to have listened to the sounds of Palestinian infiltrators "raping Israeli women, dead, alive, some injured. He told me he could hear this. ... he chose not to look, but he could hear them laughing constantly."

Some emergency emotional support could help one to go ahead with reporting the actual truth, or to cope with speaking a terrible lie that's meant to justify acts of genocide. He would say the experience of hearing multiple rapes and at least one rape-murder and some necrophilia had kept him from speaking of it until he had some "emotional support," and kept him from saying it on camera until the next day. But by then, he was clear that he visually SAW just the ONE rape-murder he mentions from then on. 

In fact, in a Kan interview, Dec. 18, he says "I couldn't hear her, I think they blocked her mouth." (העד הגלוי הראשון למעשי האונס) But at first he could ONLY hear her, and later to the Times, he painfully recalled her "screams without words." 

Note how Raz Cohen originally had multiple-rape and necrophilia claims ("Israeli women, dead, alive, some injured"), then by October 10th he didn't. He wasn't at Sapir's mythical "assembly point." Sapir and Yura Karol were there, and so from November on, THEY had the multiple-rape and necrophilia claims. It's almost as if the narrative managers transfer atrocity claim files between their fake "security consultant" witnesses whenever they decide to re-organize them. 

Note also: Yura said in November that he "didn't see the rape," but then by late December he decided that he DID see it. Like Raz, he's a "security consultant." Two of two described "security consultant" witnesses wound up switching from hearing the rape(s) to actually seeing them. It's almost as if the narrative managers had their fake "security consultant" witnesses revise their stories to fit Israel's propaganda (or "hasbara") needs: "give us the kind of story after which "Gaza [will] not continue to be [on] the map." It needs to be terrible, and you need to have SEEN it, leaving no doubts."

3D) Some Other Witnesses to Rapes at the Rave

At least two witnesses described to the Times women at the Nova rave seemingly raped and murdered around the site, One was in a rawhide vest, bound and bent over, and another whose "her vagina area appeared to have been sliced open, “as if someone tore her apart.” Both victims were only seen after the fact, if they were seen at all. Again, neither witness - a ZAKA rescuer, and an event organizer - was able to document it. 

There have been others that didn't make it into this report. For example:

On December 3 - as these other stories were coming out louder and thicker, there was at least one other reported by the New York Post which the Times' later report failed to follow-up on - perhaps due to credibility issues, even relative to the cases above, this 39-year-old alleged ravegoer didn't get a long interview in an Israeli cafe

https://nypost.com/2023/12/03/news/horrific-new-stories-of-hamas-rapes-in-israel-surface-including-attack-on-woman-with-face-of-an-angel-who-screamed-to-be-killed/

Yoni Saadon, a 39-year-old father of four and foundry shift manager, spoke to the UK’s Sunday Times, about witnessing two women killed, one after rape and the other for resisting rape.  

first one witnessed "after pulling over him the body of a slain woman who had also been shot in the head — and smearing her blood on himself so it looked like he, too, was dead." 

“I saw this beautiful woman with the face of an angel and eight or 10 of the fighters beating and raping her,” ... “When they finished, they were laughing, and the last one shot her in the head,” he said. “I will never forget her face,” he said. “Every night I wake to it and apologize to her, saying, ‘I’m sorry.’"

"Saadon said he eventually joined others who had fled the site and hid in trees and bushes. That’s when he witnessed two more Hamas gunmen attack another young woman who was resisting being stripped, he said." He wasn't hiding under anyone this time, but was still able to see this without being seen. 

“They threw her to the ground, and one of the terrorists took a shovel and beheaded her,” Saadon told the UK outlet. “And her head rolled along the ground. I see that head, too,” when he wakes up at night, driven almost to madness by these terrible and ever-so-real memories.

Not many witnesses mention decapitation along with rape as something they saw. So is this the same man? BBC, December 5: "One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the "noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated". To our question about how he could be sure - without seeing it - that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape." Is that Mr. Saadon? Did he switch from hearing to seeing, like Cohen and Karol did? Or perhaps the reverse? If he's a "security consultant" like them, it isn't mentioned, but someone might want to check into that.

Again, no camera - Saadon's or any of those he was hiding with in the second spot - was allowed to see the attempted rape or the shovel beheading he describes. A thing like that can only appear in words and, according to those words, in memories - a notoriously malleable medium. - Or - Hamas' most "unspeakable" crimes, somehow can only be spoken, never documented or proven. If you accept that premise, then this Times report and this Gaza genocide might be for you. And here are some more good reasons...

4) A Soldier/Paramedic: Two Teenage Sisters Raped

Again, rescuers claim they saw things. The Times report says "A paramedic in an Israeli commando unit said that he had found the bodies of two teenage girls in a room in Be’eri. One was lying on her side, he said, boxer shorts ripped, bruises by her groin. The other was sprawled on the floor face down, he said, pajama pants pulled to her knees, bottom exposed, semen smeared on her back.” In a surprise move, "Because his job was to look for survivors, he said, he kept moving and did not document the scene."

Importantly, the report adds: "Neighbors of the two girls killed — who were sisters, 13 and 16 — said their bodies had been found alone, separated from the rest of their family."

Max Blumenthal did some research here. Bringing it to the Times report authors in Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report - The Grayzone: "That paramedic appears to be the same source CNN relied on in its own special report accusing Hamas of a systematic and deliberate campaign of rape on October 7. He is a supposed paramedic from Israeli Air Force Special Tactics rescue unit 669 identified only as “G.” And like your other sources, he has proven to be an unreliable, if not deeply dishonest, witness." CNN report with the same scene described in the same style, estimating the girls at age 13-14, from "G, a paramedic in Israel's elite 669 special tactics rescue unit," (spoken audio at 6:51 What We Know About Sexual Violence on October 7th - Tug of War - Podcast on CNN Audio)

Max B suspects this G MIGHT be the same person who authored a book about his service in unit 669 as "Guy M," on government orders. If so, he's quite likely Guy Melamed, the son of Sagi Melamed, a self-proclaimed "fundraising sensei" who had promoted the book. Just out of caution, I won't endorse that link without further reading. For now there's Guy Melamed, and then there's the paramedic dubbed "G," perhaps that same Guy, who will here be called "this guy" or "G." 

Furthermore, Max notes: "G" "was previously interviewed by the right-wing Republic TV of India," in a shared video clip. The "Chief sergeant, first class" speaks with his back turned. Max hears "a distinctive Brooklyn accent," FWIW, and it sounds like the voice heard on CNN. He describes the scene in question and also relates finding a dead baby stabbed all over, tossed into the garbage can. But only one baby was clearly reported among the dead on October 7, as Max noted: "Mila Cohen, who was accidentally shot, not stabbed, and who was not found in any garbage can. Once again, the NY Times failed to vet its sources and wound up turning to a proven fabulist for evidence." As we'll see, it seems very unlikely that this guy ever witnessed these two girls either. 

Max Blumenthal aptly concluded that G's claims probably refer to the only two teenage sisters reported as killed in Be'eri, and those were aged 13 and 16 like the neighbors said. So it can hardly be doubted this refers to Yahel and Noiya Sharabi, who were reportedly killed alongside their mother Lianne, while their father and an uncle were kidnapped alive to Gaza. (at right: Yahel, 13 - Lianne, 48 - and Noiya, 16 - as they were in life) 

The Gray Zone refuted the paramedic claim by citing reports that the bodies of Lianne, Noiya and Yahel were found 'cuddled together,' not separated and partly raped. But as mentioned in this BBC report along those lines, that's just what Lianne's parents in Bristol, England, were told. They never made contact that day and "Mrs Brisley said they later found out the bodies of their daughter and grandchildren had been found by a soldier "all cuddled together with Lianne doing what a mother would do - holding her babies in her arms, trying to protect them at the end". She took this as "a small comfort" in light of "horrible images in my mind," and some "soldier" found that for her.

How many different soldiers would have found the girls? Probably just one that's spoken up, and this probably refers to the guy in question. If so, he told grandma Brisley they were all found hugging and implicitly un-raped, and then told the world, by a few sources culminating with the New York Times, that the girls WERE apparently raped. 

Such duplicity would make a certain sense, trying to spare the family from the truth, but letting the world see it so they can understand Israel's war aims. But it seems neither of those stories from the soldier-rescuer(s) is true. 

A more detailed report was run in the UK Sun on October 17 is based on family interviews and photographs from the site. According to this report, "It has been confirmed Yahel died alongside her mum Lianne while her sister Noiya, 16, dad Eli, 51 and uncle Yossi, 53 were missing or kidnapped." How could Noiya be found "cuddled" with the other two - or be seen raped and dead next to her sister - and also be declared "missing?"

Several images of the home are shown in the Sun report, displaying no sign of fire or shelling, suggesting the violence here was all by Hamas, not the IDF. "A hallway where a huge blackened smear of blood appears to be the spot where Lianne died. And upstairs, another bloodstain tells its horror story in a room where Yahel slept — heavily staining the carpet close to a pair of pink pyjamas and vanity case." The family dog was killed, just off frame of the living room photograph. Some blood was shed at least in the pantry, and some bloody blue fabric is seen in the room "where Yahel was slain." The single body is removed by the time of this photo, and the reported bloodstain is left off-frame.

But by this report, Noiya's body was not found anywhere in the house, and she was declared missing as of October 17. Her remains were found, likely somewhere else, and formally identified on October 22. (The Guardian 10/22) Jewish News 10/25: "Noiya was identified through her teeth only two days ago." We just buried a mother and two daughters and the father is missing. This is a second Holocaust' - Jewish News Therefore, it's difficult to see how Noiya can be seen dead "in a room" with her sister, raped or otherwise, in the immediate aftermath. I'm really going to need to see verification for the paramedic's claim. But as it so happens, he failed to document this important crime scene, and no one else got a photo until after the two alleged bodies were removed. 

Still ... it was a good enough story for the New York friggin' Times with its research department and so on. 

Israeli media mouthpiece Eylon Levy cited the Republic interview of this guy G, in a post on X offering to hook journalists up with the witness:  "Israeli special forces paramedic describes the aftermath of the brutal rape and execution of Israeli girls in Be’eri during the October 7 Massacre." Here with translated captions, he describes two girls in "their own bedroom," as usual with one on the bed and one on the floor - then he mentions how "the girl" - not one of the girls - whom he estimated to be aged 14-15, "was laying on her bed - on the floor" (correcting himself), face down, with the signs he describes about the same as above, calling the rape "brutal, brutal." The other "girl" ... he doesn't say here. She wasn't "THE girl" or maybe not a girl at all, but the mother he sometimes calls a girl, and it seems less and less clear that she was raped. "The girl" was left to lie "in the blood of her ... in a pile of blood." He seems to correct himself before specifying WHOSE blood that was. Is that because he learned not to say "sister" and knew not to contradict it either?

Maybe he saw Lianne and Yahel and no third person, and decided both were "girls." But other reports had the two dying on separate floors, not together "in their bedroom." The other reports are preferable, and it seems likely this guy "G" was not even present at the site. He does seem informed, if still confused, about the 2-sisters vs. 2-females issue there, where he plugged his "memories" of Hamas rape evidence. Concurring with Max: "the NY Times failed to vet its sources and wound up turning to a proven fabulist for evidence."

Sagi, if that's your kid ... he's a moron.

P.S. Did G or anyone actually observe semen on the back of 13-year-old Yahel? Perhaps. But if so, the meaning isn't  certain. Hamas invaders or others in their wake are probable culprits, of course - men sometimes rape even without orders. But if some other "rescuers" of the Haredi-staffed agencies ZAKA or United Hatzalah had arrived before him, it might matter that "like with many insular religious communities, the Haredis historically have an enormous sexual abuse problem." It's not limited to the infamous abuser Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, the disgraced and deceased ZAKA founder. (see: "If You Say Anything to Anyone, a Zaka Van Will Run You Over" (thewaywardrabbler.com)) I'm suggesting someone in their ranks might be willing to rape an attractive corpse, if not just for the twisted pleasure of it, then for the propaganda potential of the evidence he would leave behind. But I don't really suspect this; more likely, this rape evidence never existed outside the world of words. With maybe some scattered exceptions, I would guess no one raped anyone in this attack, at least for being far too busy with other things. 

P.S. What happened to Noiya? We can only guess, and so I will. Her mother and sister may have been perceived as offering resistance and swiftly killed, or were killed on accident as the terrorists blasted through some locked door, or the like.  Perhaps they were able to spare Noiya and take her captive, maybe injured. They might take her along with others to another house, where she and the rest were killed - perhaps by Hamas or, quite possibly, in one of the IDF tank and/or helicopter attacks that seemingly collapsed several homes in Be'eri. These mysterious events prevented several dozen abductions by killing the captives along with their captors, and it seems this happened by design. We've heard several accounts and even seen video from just one of these, but there were several others with stories left untold, and Noiya Sharabi's true story quite likely intertwines with one of those.

5) Gal Abdush, Some Video Evidence, and the Misleading of a Family

The Times report led with the case of Gal Abdush, probably because there actually WAS video evidence involved in this rare case. As the Times relates the story, Gal attended the rave with her husband Nagi Abdush, until the attack began just after sunrise. They apparently fled early and made it some ways north on route 232 before they were killed under murky circumstances, leaving behind 2 children. Gal and Nagi Abdush, 34 & 35: Couple were 'best friends' | The Times of Israel

As the Times explained: "That night, Eden Wessely, a car mechanic, drove to the rave site with three friends and found Ms. Abdush sprawled half naked on the road next to her burned car, about nine miles north of the site. ... lying on her back, dress torn, legs spread, vagina exposed." 

In a highly unusual development, Ms. Wessely recorded what she saw in some short videos and then published them. A provided video screenshot relates the familiar scene in a view I had never seen (at right). "When she posted the video of the woman in the black dress on her Instagram story, she was deluged with messages" and it went viral. For example, Daniel Amram, a popular private news blogger in Israel, tweeted the video to Greta Thunberg, claiming that the victim “was raped and burned alive.” (but he thinks it's "this family who just found her sister")  

More importantly "Based largely on the video evidence — which was verified by The New York Times — Israeli police officials said they believed that Ms. Abdush was raped, and she has become a symbol of the horrors visited upon Israeli women and girls during the Oct. 7 attacks." 

Was this conclusion based "largely" or "totally" on this video evidence? Again, nowhere was forensic evidence for or against rape gathered, and no witness claims that I've seen, including in this report, indicates that Gal was raped. So it's not clear what other evidence there would be.

The Electronic Intifada & the Gray Zone (at least by citation) seem to not recognize it; "There is currently no trace of the video on the internet despite the Times claim that it “went viral.”" Perhaps due just to the nudity it includes, the video is not allowed on the usual platforms, but it frequently appears, is scrubbed, and re-appears. Still images and discussion of it abound. Max Blumenthal did well enough discussing the video at one point (recalled now as "I demonstrated months ago that Abdush had been killed by an explosion."). 

I saw the video on Hamas-Massacre.net. The body's pose with spread legs COULD be natural or unrelated to rape, and her lack of underwear with the skimpy dress COULD be her deliberate choice. But between them, I see the suggested rape everyone else does. However ... In part 3, I included some clues that she was killed by an Apache's 30mm cannon shell that somehow tore across her right thigh before detonating on impact with the ground and taking off the back of her head. There are other explanations for the different injuries, including that some are postmortem. But judging by the images alone, she most likely died from the massive head injury (a split scalp and broken edge of her skull near the crown are just visible enough in the video). 

I also argued how it was several hours after her death that Mrs. Abdush's body was moved into the seen pose. If her right arm sticks up like that due to rigor mortis, as I suspect, she was probably in a different position, perhaps face-down and/or in a complex situation, for at least 8-10 hours before this twisted bit of staging. And the burning of her upper left torso, left arm, and face was seemingly done only then, in this final position. 

If the seen pose is the "proof" of Hamas rape and a fit basis for genocide and ethnic cleansing against the people of Gaza ... and someone artificially arranged that pose, perhaps to also conceal another death by IDF "friendly fire" ... well, that would be damn troubling. But the good news would be that, judging by the massive lack of visual evidence for rape, this kind of staging was not widespread.

My next step, maybe taken slowly as well, is to reconsider the physical-visual "OSINT" evidence in light of the new reports and all else, to see if I can confirm that initial view or find an even better explanation that might be of actual help in clearing up this ongoing confusion. I'll be citing some great OSINT work by Michael Kobs at this thread: Michael Kobs on X: "The circumstances of Gal Abdush's death raise very serious questions indeed.) 

But briefly here, from the articles I've read: Gal's last message was at 6:51 am, quoted as "we are at the border, and you can’t imagine sounds of explosions around us." Also given: simply "You don't understand." Her killing was apparently around 7am, as reported then by her husband Nagi - he mentioned how "they" had "shot" Gal, unclear where or with what, and she was "dying" - maybe less suddenly than I would expect by the head wound (and reports I've seen don't have Apache helicopters up quite this early). "They" presumably means Hamas, although it's not clear if he could know just who Gal was "shot" by. Nagi continued sending messages for another 45 minutes before he too was killed, at the end asking his brother to watch out for their kids. Apparently none of the messages mentioned anyone raping Gal, burning her alive, or anything of the sort.

As geolocated by Michael Kobs, they died near the "Mefalsim Battle" as given at Mapping the Massacres (oct7map.com) where Hamas hardly killed or kidnapped anyone as they crumbled under an aggressive defense that day, with a lot of deaths, and some civilian deaths on the highway just after that "dangerous curve." Gal and Nagi at least died there but weren't mapped there. At right, from Michael's thread: the location of Gal's body and the car (Nagi is badly charred and partly missing, on the other side of the car)

Between messages from Gal and Nagi, the police, and everything they knew, the family heard nothing about suspicions or evidence for rape until the Times reporters showed up. 

The report says family members saw the Wessely video of Gal's remains, recognized them, and “feared that she might have been raped.” Perhaps someone was coaxed to agree that though had crossed their mind(s). But the victim's sister Miral Alter stated in a January 2 Instagram comment that she doubted the rape claims and all the reasons given to support them, and complained “the New York Times that came to us indicated that they wanted to do a story in memory of Gal and Nagy and that’s why we approved. If we knew that it was a headline like rape slaughter, we would never agree. Never.” Gal Abdush’s mother Etti Brakha, her sister Tali Barakha, and Nagi’s brother Nissim Abdush have also lodged similar complaints, as compiled at Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report - The Grayzone

Some respond to this with a Hebrew-language article at Ynet from December 31, wherein Gal's mother, her brother Rami Bracka, and Nagi's mother now seem to believe that Gal was in fact raped. But they all "learned" this from the Times report and/or its journalists' assurances that, as Gal's mother put it, "they cross-checked the testimonies and said Gal had been sexually assaulted" - somebody witnessed it. But no testimonies that I've seen, and none that the Times shared, sheds any light on Gal's demise, except for Nagi's messages, which of course mentioned no such thing. Did the reporters pull a trick here?

Gals mother, Etti Brakha: "We didn't know about the rape at first, only when the New York Times reporter contacted us did we know. They said they cross-checked the testimonies and said Gal had been sexually assaulted. We still don't know exactly what happened." She also thinks "There is evidence that they saw my daughter's sexual assault." As far as we've seen, there's evidence that Nagi saw no such thing (his failing to mention it), and no other testimony to contradict that. If the reporters suggested otherwise, they might have been dishonest.

Rami Brakha, Gal's brother: "It was only in the New York Times investigation that we understood from the journalists that my sister had been raped. It was hard to know what she went through before she was shot and murdered." But by some magic they still can't explain, Gettleman, Schwartz and Sella had figured it out for the family.

Finally, Nagi's mother recalls "That morning, my son Nagi called us and said, '[they] Kill her, shoot her,' and screamed on the phone on speakerphone. Only now, after hearing what they did to Gal, do I try to think about what my son saw with his own eyes, how his wife was sexually abused, before they shot her and then shot him." It would be easy to not think about it earlier, when Nagi spoke of no such thing. Even now, that should make very limited sense.

So those folks don't seem to feel misled by the reporters, even though they probably should. And I haven't seen Miral Alter, for one, act convinced by the Times' tricks. She was clear in denying Gal's rape even after the report. She knew to cite the timeline of private messages to point out "It doesn’t make any sense that in four minutes, they raped her, slaughtered her, and burned her.” Neither does it make sense that her husband would fail to mention any of that in his final minutes and several communications.

A leading pose and an inspired police reading, and supposedly some other, unseen "testimony" led the Times to decide on rape. The family had no reason yet to form this idea, but when the reporters came in so confident, some members were convinced, if also confused. Of course, journalists are supposed to follow stories, not plant them in their subjects' minds as was seemingly done here, to get them involved and seeming to support the claims. Some of them still do not buy the claims and the rest might, but apparently for no reason past the same journalistic tricks under discussion here.  

See also: Max Blumenthal on X: "The Times must issue a retraction and punish @Gettleman and his colleagues if it can not discredit the IG comment below by Miral Alter (apparent sister of Gal Abdush) At The Grayzone, I demonstrated months ago that Abdush had been killed by an explosion on October 7, and was not…" / X (twitter.com)

On Rising via Max Blumenthal on X

Watch: NY Times "investigation" of mass rape by Hamas falls apart | The Electronic Intifada

Family of key case in New York Times October 7 sexual violence report renounces story, says reporters manipulated them – Mondoweiss

Conclusion: And that, folks, is how the New York friggin' Times crafted its big assist for the Netanyahu regime's ongoing genocide in Gaza.

How SITU Twisted the Maidan Sniper Massacre

March 20, 2023

Last edits March 24 - some updates re:Dmytriv in progress

Intro to Sniper Questions

Ukraine became such a great democracy to defend from Russia only in early 2014, after a "Revolution of Dignity." The pinnacle of this was when the previous government of Viktor Yanukovych was removed over accusations of mass murder. His security forces allegedly fired on the people around the central Maidan square in several episodes, killing over 100 protesters - the "Heavenly Hundred" - and a reported 18 police officers. The bulk of the protesters were killed the morning of February 20, reportedly by police snipers on the ground, who were seen firing their weapons. But there were widespread reports of mysterious shooters playing a part, from the surrounding buildings that had come under control of the protesters and organized street thugs and their allies like Svoboda, Right Sector, and assorted, murkier foreign agents. 

This massacre was an immediate reason early elections were called as President Yanukovych was denounced, sanctioned, and swiftly chased from the country - reportedly after assassination attempts. It's part of why his party of Regions had its headquarters torched on Feb. 20, by an armed mob (who reportedly beat an IT worker there to death). It's part of why the Regions party was soon illegalized, along with the Communist party, and a slew of opposition parties since. It allowed a bold new program in Ukraine, dedicated to fighting "Russian domination" and "corruption," while embracing "Democratic, European values" and striving towards "Euro-Atlantic integration." As a guiding spirit, they chose anti-Russian national hero and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

That snipers episode was far from the only factor in this, but it was at the time crucial in shaping opinions, especially abroad, to favor this transition. It's a big part of why separatists in Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, and elsewhere were seen either as a Russian hoax or as "terrorists" with no right to reject thew new program, It's a big part of why Ukraine's new government was blessed and armed to wage civil war on the separatists, and why Russia wasn't allowed to intervene to defend them. It's part of why Ukraine is now worth risking global nuclear war over. 

And this geopolitically useful outcome is why we're led to turn a blind eye to the snipers massacre underpinning it, to unquestioningly accept the new government's creation myth. 

But questions were raised at the time, from many quarters, and many questions have been answered since. Professor Ivan Katchanovski, a renowned scholar of Ukrainian affairs, is one who has followed closely. A political scientist at the University of Ottawa, Prof. Katchanovski "had marshaled overwhelming evidence to conclude Maidan protesters were killed by pro-coup snipers," as The Grayzone recently noted. This work was encapsulated in "a peer-reviewed paper initially approved and praised by a prestigious academic journal" until it was "suddenly rescinded without explanation," likely under political pressure. 

That seems to be an updated, 2022 version of this 2021 report: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356691143_The_Maidan_Massacre_in_Ukraine_Revelations_from_Trials_and_Investigation/link/61a90e3f29948f41dbbc300f/download For general reference, see that report and these 2 useful videos: Video Appendix H - How Maidan Protesters Were Shot from Maidan-Controlled Buildings (2020) - The "Snipers' Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine (2021) - YouTube. From the latter video:

My focus here is on a bit of work from a few years back, but which I first learned of recently in that report: 

A New York architecture company working with a team of Ukrainian “volunteers” did a 3D model reconstruction of the killings of three Maidan protesters on an order of Maidan victims lawyers for the Maidan massacre trial.53 This SITU model was cited by these lawyers and the Prosecutor General of Ukraine under Poroshenko as definite evidence that the Maidan protesters were massacred by the Berkut police and that snipers did not massacre the protesters.

The project in question was by SITU, and still viewable at: http://maidan.situplatform.com/ 

An explanatory article from 2018 gives collaborators: Ukrainian legal team including attorneys Pavel Dykan and Alexandra Iatsenko with the Advocacy Advisory Panel, Center for Human Rights Science (CHRS) at Carnegie Mellon University, Jus Talionis Reconstruction Lab. "This project is part of SITU’s Spatial Practice as Evidence and Advocacy (SPEA) project, which seeks to utilize spatial analysis and visualization in the service of human rights fact-finding and reporting. ... The interactive platform and co-developed tool for the analysis of citizen video will have significant impact on court proceedings. It will mark the first time that visual evidence and analysis of its kind will be presented in Ukrainian courts." 

Finally: "The work of SPEA is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Oak Foundation and the Open Society Foundations." No surprise there. 

And see who else loves this project: Who Killed the Kiev Protesters? A 3-D Model Holds the Clues - The New York Times (nytimes.com) June 3, 2018. The Times article poses the "claims of grief-stricken activists" - that their fellows were killed by Berkut police - against "denials from Yanukovych" and "Pro-Russia sources." The latter sources tied the snipers to "a U.S.-backed plot" for regime change in "a “false flag” operation carried out by snipers associated with the protesters, or mercenaries from the country of Georgia, who were said to have shot down from nearby buildings. To this day, the story continues to circulate on Kremlin-funded media like Sputnik and RT." And to this day, the claim continues to be reflected in the direct, physical evidence, as related by Professor Katchanovski, for one. From there, it's paywalled for me. But apparently, this scientific modeling proved the Russians totally wrong. (more sources below)

I appreciate the hard work, by SITU and its partners, that went into cataloguing the videos and modeling the area, parsing the medical reports and putting it all together. But this doesn't give them the right to distort the evidence like they do, modeling it wrong, over and over, to the same politically useful effect. 

Prof. Katchanovski authored a Critical response: The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West (consortiumnews.com) (April 22, 2019) - cited below. He also revisited the issue in the 2021 report: 

However, the wound locations of the three killed Maidan protesters in the 3D model do not match the wound locations in the forensic medical examinations of the bodies and clothes and locations of appearing bullet holes in shields and a helmet of these protesters right after they were shot. 

...[example, cited below]

42       The locations and directions of the wounds of these three protesters in forensic medical examinations and matching bullet holes that appeared in the shields of two of them and a helmet another along with their positions at the times of their killings point to their shooting from the top part of the Bank Arkada in the Maidan-controlled area. Several Maidan protesters and medics pointed to snipers there shortly before and after these three protesters were killed. (Video Appendix H). 

Other shootings have always seemed to come from the Hotel Ukraine, or the October Palace, or a few other buildings, as each came under control of militant "protesters" and the associated "EuroMaidan Self-Defense units." I called Arcade Bank early on based just on video analysis (video) and slim reports (see map at bottom of this article). But I barely followed after 2014 and never saw that it was confirmed by much evidence. 

"These three protesters," were probably shot "from the top part of the Bank Arkada in the Maidan-controlled area." By my own review of the available evidence, I'd say one of the 3 probably was shot from Arcade Bank. Another could well be, and the other is possible, but both of these others fit best with shots from one or another of a few building ahead that, as far as I know, no one has discussed. 

Why These Three Victims?

These three cases were selected, perhaps, because the "activists" thought these were the best chances at circumventing the Maidan snipers problem. Shooters from Hotel Ukraine and October Palace were well-known issues, while other suspect buildings were less known. These three are among those shot from other locations, so the researchers might have taken that as adequate to implicate Berkut snipers, on the ground at the police barricade - their "Area of Interest."  

There's no explanation I found, aside from the video Experiments at the Intersection of Art, Law and Innovation, where SITU partner Brad Samuels says "There's really good video footage of those three deaths." (43:23) There's also good video of other deaths, but they didn't chose any others. 

From my own small files, 6 shootings, with limited visual detail, so provisional findings of gunfire seemingly from Ukraine Hotel and Arcade Bank just up the street. In one video study (also linked above), we see 2 people behind a low wall shielding them from the police barricade but exposing them to the hotel and to Arcade bank. They're shot, from which of the directions is unclear. Then another rises and starts to run towards the hotel. He has his body turned right to face the street, shield up on his right/back side against the police line. He's shot, it seems, from above and behind, knocking him down and towards the curb. I could be wrong about a visible exit from his chest, but even then, these details seems to line up very well with a newly-opened upper-floor window at Arcade Bank.

Another example from my own small collection: a young man is shielded from police by his shield and a tree he sits against, but he faces the Hotel Ukraine. He looks up, seems to see something at the hotel, and starts to rise just as two shots are fired at him - at least one hits his body and at least one hits his shield, creating a puff of smoke and denting the shield out so it shines a new reflection of sunlight (from the southeast) on the tree. That's clear fire from the hotel, probably upper floors. 

And a third example on YouTube: a protester crosses to aid another who was shot, shield up over his head, protecting against the hotel side. That was wise, but showed mistrust of the hotel people. He's shot as soon as he turns left so as to be briefly unshielded, then he topples away from the hotel. Another just a meter away, crouching with back exposed to the hotel, is then shot, but tips back towards the hotel. Others, including a man with a rifle, have their backs to the hotel the whole time and are never shot. 

Beyond those, just one more I stumbled across the other day: Euromaidan - Mass murder of protesters from sniper fire in Kiev Ukraine - YouTube. At 0:30, another victim is shot near Arcade Bank, tips over away from it, likely shot from it. More shootings are shown, but they didn't seem as clear, and I ran out of time. Here are all 7 mapped on Situ's handy model to show what it all means in 3D. (Some placements are inexact.)

Here's a basic idea topographical view, to show why even with the slope, elevated shooting requires buildings. If it comes from around the police barricades but seems elevated, it probably came from another building that way. not from the police at their ground-level positions.

That's just seven shootings to Situ's three claiming to prove the opposite. I'm open to mixed indications, where the Berkut did shoot some of the protesters. But even with theses cases, it's not very mixed. I'll examine these three now and show that makes ten instances of fatal shooting that apparently came from protester-controlled buildings - including these select cases for the opposite. There are others such that, as I gather, they might all be shot by these mystery snipers and not the blamed Berkut. And if these three examples are the best it gets, alongside the worse cases, that really cements the problem professor Katchanovski has been studying.

The victims in the three cases below were all killed in the same basic area as those 7. SITU's page has a cases section: http://maidan.situplatform.com/report/23#, where each is mapped, with video explanation, archived videos, attached reports from The Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine, describing the relevant injuries (cited below as "medical report"), and a report from Knox and Associates, LLC, signed by Michael A. Knox, Board Certified Crime Scene Reconstructionist - to determine the approximate distance and direction from which the shots were fired, and to add other notes (cited below as "Knox").

I go through a lot of details that require explanation, Feel free to skim through overly-detailed parts, noting the bolded bits. But if you see a point you want explained, you can go back and check the explanation. It's not so mind-numbing to read once you're motivated. The first case requires an extra-detailed review compared to the other two. Skim-reading may be in order there.

1) Igor F. Dmytriv 

Situ overview: Igor F. Dmytriv was fatally shot at 09:21:59 on February 20, 2014. In two videos capturing the moment of his shooting, Dmytriv can be observed crouching with a shield in a grouping of three other protesters on Instytutska Street. At the time of the fatal gunshot, Dmytriv was oriented southeast with his torso facing Barricade 1 and Barricade 2. Two videos documenting law enforcement officer locations leading up to, during, and after 09:21:59 in the vicinity of Dmytriv are included in the collection of relevant videos. Spatial analysis of bullet trajectory and gunshot audio latency places the shooter causing Dmytriv’s fatal wound within the Area of Interest.

Injuries, Medical report: 4 wounds total, starting with entry and exit wounds to his upper right arm: wound № 1 is "at the front external surface and at the edge of the middle and the lower third, approximately at the height of 164 cm from pelma [soles of the feet] and approximately 24 cm down from the right shoulder joint." wound № 2 "is positioned at the right hand (shoulder level) at the front surface and in the middle third, 169 cm up from pelma and approximately 19,5 cm down from the shoulder joint." But these are hard to consider and we'll focus on the torso injuries. 

Entry: "A wound (wound № 3) is positioned at the chest at the right side surface and at the front inguinal line, 163,5 cm up from pelma and 15 cm to the right from the median line. ...The wound size is approximately 2x1 cm. ... at the right side surface of the chest (and 163,5 cm from pelma) ... "on the front inguinal line," or "between front and middle inguinal lines." I can't place different inguinal lines clearly.  One (the front?) relates to the groin, where the line may extend up the outer edge of abdominal muscles, and the "middle" one may run along the outer hip, so between them is at the curve between the front and the side of his chest. Either way, we have 15cm right of center, which is pretty much on the right side, on a standard torso about 30cm wide.  

Exit: "A wound (wound № 4) is positioned at the abdominal space on the left side surface and to the back from the left middle inguinal line, 143 cm up from pelma and 23,5 cm to the left from omphalos (naval or middle). ... The wound size is approximately 0,3-0,4x1,5 cm. ... at the left side abdominal surface (a little to the back from the relative inguinal line and 143 cm from pelma)." Unless Dmytriv is much fatter than he looks, 23.5 cm left of the naval must be circumferential measure, around to the side and then a bit to the back - the whole torso is usually about 30cm wide or less.

Canal: "The wound canal begins from the wound, goes from the right to the left, from the top to the bottom, a little from the front to the back and ends at the wound № 4. The wound № 4 is positioned ... The wound canal sized approximately 33 cm between the wound № 3 and the wound № 4" ... An irregular oval injury ... is positioned on the right hemidiaphragm at the muscular part at the spine (lumbar part) level 155 cm up from pelma on the side of right peritoneal cavity. The wound canal also includes "the middle part of the right lung at the side surface" and it passes through the left kidney.

Knox: "Dmytriv suffered a single-bullet compound gunshot wound with the bullet, which perforated the right arm and the torso, following a right-to-left, front-to-back, downward trajectory across the body relative to the anatomic position." That's just a nice summary. 

Injuries, mapped vs. modeled

Katchanovski, 2021 report cited this example in detail

"For instance, according to forensic medical examination, Ihor Dmytriv was shot in the “right side surface” and the “left side surface” of the torso “from the right to the left, from the top to the bottom, and a little from the front to the back” with the entry wound 20.5cm higher than the exit wound. A Maidan victims’ lawyer visually demonstrated at the trial that these wounds locations of were in the right and left sides. In the video of their examination of Dmytriv right after his shooting, Maidan medics also show such locations of his wounds with no wounds visible in the front area, contrary to the 3D model. However, in the 3D model, his wounds were moved to the front and the back and made nearly horizontal in order to fit them to the Berkut positions on the ground.54 (See Video Appendix H)."

"Maidan medics also show such locations of his wounds with no wounds visible in the front area, contrary to the 3D model."

All told, I'm not sure how much SITU fudged the diagonal track (front-back vs. side-to-side). To exit somewhat from his back, seems it had to enter a bit on the front, and the track seems roughly "corner" to "corner" either way. As I'll show, there's also an issue with how his body was modeled in the scene that helps bring the blame to the Berkut. What's even more interesting, as Katchanovski also noted, is how the line of fire was "made nearly horizontal," or at least made to appear that way.

First, some given numbers don't add up. The victim is given as 182 cm tall, so an entry wound 163.5cm is at jaw level, not anywhere on his torso, and 143 is at shoulder level, not abdomen. The same numbers appear in the Ukrainian original, so it's not a typo. I don't know what can explain this discrepancy, but as I'll show, it corrects well to go by specific anatomical points referenced, which leads us to shift the wounds, and the suggested descent between them, down about 33cm. 

A good fit for all found with the Pythagorean theorem: A 33 cm wound canal would run 20.5 cm vertically and about 26 cm horizontally through the body - my quick estimate suggest about 26-28cm to cross an average-sized body diagonally. So I suppose these numbers do add up, and only the height of wounds was given differently.

Correcting entry wound level: taking a right arm wound 24 cm down from the shoulder and also 163.5 cm up makes sense only for a giant. But chest wound № 3 is given at the same level (164 cm) which also makes no sense. So maybe it's also about 24cm below the shoulder? That gives an entry almost where Situ shows it (blue dot in my image), but his arm was raised so that its wound would measure a bit lower than the corresponding torso injury. That happens to fit with the described decent and internal injuries. With the entry wound around 133cm up, at the 5th or 6th rib, it would then damage the right middle lung, the diaphragm (magenta curve) just right of the spinal area, and the left kidney (magenta oval). 

I attempted to quantify the bullet track shown In SITU's modeling, estimating the wound locations on an upright body. I may have placed them a bit too low or too level, but I get about 13 cm shown descent vs. 20.5 in the medical report. It could be greater than 13cm, but it's certainly leveled some compared to the medical report.

That difference seems fairly mild, but the victim also seems modeled with a slightly different rotation of head and torso than seen in reality, distorting the suggested trajectory. The video shows Dmytriv's back and right side almost equally, with the left arm just barely visible, while the model shows back side almost totally, with left arm fully visible. His right shoulder also seems modeled lower, pointing almost straight up the sidewalk, in an angled slouch that leans into the bullet, 

All this would makes the different overall rotation less visually obvious, and would help minimize the "downward angle" as more explained by a crouching posture than it actually was. All differences appear mild and hard to quantify, but here I trace outline, apparent median of torso and head, and shoulder position.  

The real angle of fire should be a bit more towards the street from the right, not from up the street or at all from the left side. After the shot, Dmytriv tumbles backwards and left, towards the street, probably from the velocity of the gunshot from ahead and to the right.

The angles here reflect a crouched position, not standing, so some half of this "upward" angle is an illusion, and some of the rightward angle as well. But the rest is no illusion, and all together, it describes a shooter a bit ahead, well to the right, and well elevated. In contrast, SITU's erred modeling produced a shooter at ground level (barely elevated by topography), just slightly to the right but well ahead, on a line crossing both "Militsiya" barricades, with barricade 1 seemingly favored. 

Knox: "As modeled, the trajectory matches the position of Dmytriv’s body as depicted in Videos #1 and #2." But "as modeled" is not how it was. The bullet track was leveled in his body and perhaps shifted to the front-back, then his body slouched down on the right side, and turned to the left. No single aspect was done terribly wrong, but the small effects add up to a rather incorrect result.

Shield and Body Position: 

(revised 3/24): This took some slower re-analysis. To start, Dmytiv was facing less up the street to the southeast than I initially though. An important BBC News video of his shooting from behind at ground level was shot from the sidewalk alongside the hotel (dark blue line in graphics below), not the main sidewalk (about at the green line). From this view, Dmytriv lines up with the distant sign (yellow). It also aligns with the peak of a distant building I think is at 16 Instytutska, although the view here is oddly magnified, and these buildings are obviously downhill from the protesters. 

His shield seems to face roughly ahead on that line - the little forshortening reflects a few degrees to the left - while his body is rotated to face about 2/3 ahead on this line, and about 1/3 or to the left. That's about 30°, perhaps a bit more (30-35°) left of straight ahead on the BLUE line. Relative to the main sidewalk and street here, he's facing around 45-50° to the left of ahead, but his shield is held something like 25-30° to his right. This is consistent with the other view from above, where his shield is not visible (so it doesn't confirm this point either). 

This right-shielding would require a certain position with right hand closer, arm less extended, and likely shoulder back a bit (sketched below, crudely but to scale). The real angle is probably less than the 30° shown here, for a more forward-shielded posture, but somewhat like this. (a graphic that does too much at once, but oh well)

Note how this right-shielded position fits better with both shield and arm damage, and the most side-to-side of the 3 possible bullet tracks here (lime green). The angles: red is SITU - green is what I traced in black - lime green added for options, and it proved a a better fit. Below I add yet another even more side-to-side track that could fit just as well. 

Dmytriv is modeled at one point facing about the right angle (top left), with the slight posture change noted above, but with shield held ahead, not on his right, yielding a different position, with left hand closer, left elbow pulled back. In other views, his head and implied shield seem to face differently, mainly across the street (at right) or completely across the street, with his head turned to face slightly back down the street (bottom left). It could matter that they trace the bullet track in red from the position(s) that appears extra-twisted. (green lines here follow shadows, but that seems to be roughly the same as the unmarked curb, if the sign is set perpendicular to it, like usual) 

Knox: "Video #1 also depicts movement in the metal shield held by Dmytriv in association with the sound of the gunshots indicating that his shield was struck by both shots. The bullet from the second shot inflicted Dmytriv’s wounds." According to the modeling, no shots should have hit his shield. . Katchanovski's work suggests just one bullet hit the shield. Video Appendix H show 2 holes in the front of his shield before this (other frames clarify that's Dmytriv with the same clothes and same shield), and apparently no holes in its side (0:30, held upside-down). After the shooting, a visible new bullet hole appears (1:27) on the right edge. These visuals are not conclusive, but that's about where any new impact has to anyway, given the complex set of observed injuries. 

The shield's right edge seems to be angled slightly to face the right, besides the its mild overall curve to the same effect. This too means the shot came well from his right. The first "impact" could just be from Dmytriv jerking in reaction to the first gunshot nearby. When he's hit, the shield can be seen moving to the right. The lack of new bullet holes in the front again shows he was not shot from ahead, but the injuries always said the same thing anyway. 

Mapping

Knox: the distance from the firearm to the camera/microphone was in the range of 80m to 219m, "consistent with the shots having been fired from somewhere near Barricade #1." But the shield damage and bodily injuries are not consistent with that. 

In his approximate actual position, a shot from the right does not clearly point to the barricade. Depending on the bullet tracks sketched above, it came roughly on one of the red, green, or lime lines, or a similar angle added here in yellow to include Bank Arkada as a possibility. The other lines suggest one of the buildings ahead, with differing elevation-to-distance ratios. The best fit is probably between green and lime, which is occupied by one building of some height, and the low, open patio of another. I know nothing about the status of these buildings, but they're indicated in the other two cases as well, and we'll come back to them more at the end. SITU's line to the barricade is ruled out for being well too far to the left, and because the Berkut at the barricade had no jet packs to hover above the place and provide that downward angle of fire.

Barricade Shooting?

Knox: "Video #2 depicts two separate bursts of firearms discharge residues (smoke) appearing contemporaneously with each of the audible shots. The two separate areas of discharge residues, in conjunction with different pitch and tone values for the audible shots, indicate that two separate shots were fired by two separate individuals, both of whom are located in the area of Barricade #1. ...  his shield was struck by both shots. The bullet from the second shot inflicted Dmytriv’s wounds." 

There may be shooters ahead, blocked from view, and there are Berkut - one of their helmets may be visible (orange), ducking behind the sandbags and junk called a barricade. The second puff of smoke I see is at, or in line with, Dmyriv's shield, in front of a sign (yellow) that, in turn, is in front of the barricade. No Berkut fired from out in front like that, even if the angle of fire might seem plausible.  To me, that smoke seems related to the bullet's impact (vaporized aluminum?). The smoke plume appears so large, I expect i's much closer to the camera, like right at the shield. The smoke from that round's firing is somewhere off-frame, apparently to the right and above. An earlier puff of smoke or dust to the right looks like to me like another round impacting the ground or maybe a sandbag, apparently on this side of a low wall and the barricade, where there is clearly no shooter under the junk. If I'm right about that (no expert), then just the one shot hit Dmytriv and his shield, as the one new hole suggested. And that would mean 2 people fired at once, one shooting the police barricade, as the other killed Mr. Dmytriv. 

2) Andrii Ivanovych Dygdalovych 

Katchanovski's 2021 report makes no mention of this case, so the following analysis should add something.

Situ overview: "A. I. Dygdalovych was fatally shot at 09:22:51. In a video captured near Hotel Ukraine, Dygdalovych can be observed approaching and standing with a group of four other protesters on Instytutska Street. At the time of fatal gunshot, Dygdalovych was oriented southeast with the front of his torso facing Barricade 1 and Barricade 2. Law enforcement officers are visible in the video frame at those locations at the moment of Dygdalovych’s shooting. A video documenting law enforcement unit locations during, and after 09:22:51 in the vicinity of Dygdalovych are included in the collection of relevant videos. Spatial analysis of bullet trajectory and gunshot audio latency places the shooter causing Dygdalovych’s fatal wound within the Area of Interest."

Note: Dmytriv was shot one minute earlier and is still laying where he fell, immobile but still breathing. It seems getting him help was Dygdalovych's mission until he too is shot. Both of them get dragged away by others with no more immediate shootings. 

Just one video is cited, although there is at least one other view from above (see appendix H video, 5:15), as shown at right. Dygdalovych is at center, in camouflage jacket, green helmet, shield up to the left but not ahead, in the moment before he was shot.

Medical report 

Entry: "Wound № 2 is located in the facies anterior of the thoracic cage, on the right side, 157 cm upward, along the cartilages alignment (lineae parasternales), level with the 2nd right rib." Lineae parasternales = parasternal line - a vertical line that, by an image I found and compared to a 15cm half-torso, is 4-4.5cm right of center. It may be even closer to the center, damaging "heart, right atrium," despite being on the right side. 

Exit: "№ 1 wound visible on the right part of the back, 140 cm from the soles upward, on the level in between the shoulder blade line and the median line ... 3 cm rightward of the linea mediana" (middle of the back or spine). The bullet exits 140cm up after entering at 157cm, so it traveled downward 17cm. Note shoulder blades run about the whole length of the rib cage, to about rib 9 or 10, and it seems the exit is near the bottom of that. 

Medical report: "The relative victim and the person who fired the gun position at the firing instant is likely envisaged according to the injuries location. The shot direction - (onto the right upper-body part) is determined: anteroposteriorly (front-to-back), downward and several from left to right." What does "several" mean here? Maybe "barely," or "barely opposite?" To hit and exit on the right side, going left-to-right but damaging the heart, and wind up just 3cm right of center means the entry wound was maybe 1-2 cm right of center, and the 1-2 cm of travel to the right could be ignored to call a front-to-back injury. 

Or, starting at the parasternal line 4-4.5cm right of center, and ending 3cm right of center actually makes for 1-1.5cm of travel right-to-left. So this point has to be left unclear, noting that it's a minor trend either way.

Injuries, mapped vs. modeled

For a given body length 185cm, again the entry and exit wounds come out too high to make sense. This is similar to Dmytriv's case, but less so, with just 9-10 cm discrepancy to his 33cm. This smaller difference is about that if measuring from the toes of extended feet rather than from the soles. The given entry wound to the chest, at 157 cm from the pelma, would be at neck or jaw level. So I shifted the entry to the 2nd rib where they described it, and the exit to 17 cm below that, which comes out about at rib 10. Path: front to back, little to no left-right movement (unclear), and descending 17cm.

In SITU's modeling, a descent is reflected, but grossly muted. -  estimating where the modeling placed the wounds, then a 5.7cm descent is shown (30 pixels), The difference is threefold. This is a major distortion. The wound canal here starts from a lower point around the 3rd or 4th rib, and ends a bit higher than suggested. This "splits the difference" to make the leveling less obvious.

A visible left-to-right angle also seems to clash with the negligible trend described. The whole path seems shifted a bit to the right, making the problem appear even worse than it is, but it seems the exit was shifted more. Entry, as noted, should be 4 or 4.5cm right of center, but here it's more like 7-8cm right (Torso probably ~32cm wide, and it appears roughly halfway between median and side). The exit is near his right armpit, around 12-14 cm from the middle, not 3cm from the median, as reported. That's about 3-4cm shifted in front, 9-11cm in back, for some 5-8 cm of left-to-right motion. That includes and exceeds the described 1-2 cm rightward travel, or it might differ from 1-2 cm travel the other way by up to 10cm.

Knox: injuries not mentioned, but "In Video #3.1, movement of Dygdalovych’s jacket associated with the bullet impact can be seen at t = 113.920 s. The direction of fire is consistent with coming from the area of the barricades." No such movement is clear to me.  SITU's video highlights his upper right back, where there may be some kind of bulge, but it can't be rel

Mapping

Distances estimate: The distance from the firearm to the camera/microphone is calculated at 65m to 128m. "These boundary values are consistent with the shots having been fired from somewhere between Barricade #1 and Dygdalovych" or right at the barricade, as decided, but no further out. 

Position: torso facing roughly straight up this sidewalk, or a few degrees to the left, while his shield is up at an angle to cover his left side more than his front. There's no sign of his shield being hit before he topples sharply downward and seemingly straight back. The suggested fire is basically from the straight ahead, maybe a bit from the left or right, and quite downward. Here are the options, mapped on the model. 

All of these elevated spots are outside the audio-estimated area, and I see no matching, elevated spots within the area. Arcade Bank is partly in the area, but too far to the right. Barricade 1 is in the area, on a good left-of-ahead line, but the Berkut there had no jetpacks. Barricade 2 is a bit uphill and would have shooting from over those trucks, but that's probably not high enough, and it's also deemed out of range. Maybe the estimated area was wrong in this case. This one is not so easy to answer. 

It's also reasonable to suspect the same shooter location as Dmytriv a minute earlier, but the best joint option would be between red & orange here, verging into just "possible" for Dygdalovych and supposedly out of range. Two nearby shooting positions so near the police barricade may not be the most logical or most convenient option, but it seems likely here. 

Barricade Shooting?

Knox: "Taken in context, the physical evidence with respect to the shooting of Dygdalovych indicates that he was likely shot by government personnel located near Barricade #1 in the video." It would need to be a spot in the air above them, but even ignoring that...

There are at least 6 or 7 Berkut snipers seen in CCTV footage from the far side, with 5 or 6 seen from the protesters' side. In the moments before the shooting, one has a rifle he fires to the left, and then we hear another shot with a different sound, from someone else unseen.  Then the Berkut aims the rifle again to the left but doesn't fire, and just before Dygdalovych is shot, he swings it to aim nearly at the camera (closer to D, but not AT him). But there's no sign of discharge from any visible rifles when the fatal shot rings out. He didn't fire that shot, so that rifle has an alibi. Another 2 or 3 rifles are seen just to the right, fired at some points, but not at this crucial one. But another area is invisible behind the shields, so we could imagine anything happening there.

3) Yuriy Grygorovych Parashchuk

Situ overview: "Yu. G. Parashchuk was fatally shot at 09:48:57. In two videos captured near Hotel Ukraine, Parashchuk can be observed crossing Instytutskaya Street with a group of protesters before crouching on the south side of the street in a cluster of trees near Metro Khreshchatyk. At the time of fatal gunshot, Parashchuk was oriented southeast with his head facing Barricade 1 and Barricade 2. Law enforcement officers can be observed in three videos at Barricade 2 at the time of Parashchuk’s shooting. Spatial analysis of bullet trajectory and gunshot audio latency places the shooter causing Parashchuk’s fatal wound within the Area of Interest."

Knox: "Taken in context, the physical evidence with respect to the shooting of Dygdalovych [sic - he was refering to Parashchuk] indicates that he was likely shot by government personnel." 

Medical report: Entry "wound № 2 … is positioned at the parietal region at the left; - Perforating and multifragmental fractures of the skull cap bones, skull covering and calvaria injuries at the left"

Exit "wound № 1 … is positioned at parietal region at the left." Both injuries are in the same area - the major upper back part of the skull, shaded green at right. They're close together, connected by a short canal, or maybe more of a trough in this case.

Canal: "The gunshot wound canal that goes from entrance gunshot wound № 2 is positioned at the parietal region at the left in a direction from the front to the back, a little from the top to the bottom, affecting the skull bones, covering and calvaria, and ends with an exit gunshot wound № 1 at the parietal region at the left." Two consistent angles shown at right. Other angles are possible, and I don't think we can get more exact in this case. But then, I didn't dig as deep into the medical report in this case. 

No left-right direction evident in a front-back trajectory means the bullet came from pretty well straight ahead. It could be from a bit to the left or right, or even two or three bits - it's a short canal and vaguely described. Any downward motion evident in such a short space means a pretty serious elevated shooter, as with the other 2 cases. 

Improper Modeling

In the video, Parashchuk is facing mainly up the street (green lines - copied into a few places for reference - it has a slight curve here), but his posture is clearly rotated to face a bit to the right. Compare to tree ahead (light blue) - he's facing to its right, not directly at it. The modeling ignores this, having him face right up the street and into that tree, or perhaps a tiny bit to the left. His body seems modeled about right relative to the "camera", but the scene is different around him, so he's facing up the street instead of to the right. This will shift the origin of fire to the left, towards SITU's "area of interest." 

Unless they meant the other line (dark blue) was the sidewalk edge, or some alternate edge in an interpolated scene? That would fit poorly with the sign and with other models, but would add several degrees more of "interesting" difference. But the meaning of this line in unclear to me, but it must mean something. It casts a shadow.

The left side of the head is hit better from the left than from the right, but no lateral direction is mentioned in the medical report. Still, Situ decided the fire came well from the left of his body. The view above appears to show a descent, but that's actually travel from the left side (see video, 3:18, 3:27, as shown below). Coming in that left-rotated position, that will shift the fire origin even further to the left, getting it right were they wanted it; they trace the fire to barricade 2, left half, where Berkut with rifles were seen.

I happen to agree he was probably shot from left of straight ahead, and maybe to that degree. But he wasn't facing left across the street. He was facing to the right, somewhat towards Arcade Bank. In context, he topples back and a bit to the right, consistent with a hit somewhat from the left of that position. But straight ahead or even a bit to the right - which would be at the bank - also seem possible.

So we happen to agree on likely left origin of fire, but I have the scene set properly around Mr. Parashchuk (but probably not exactly), while SITU rotated the scene, like it's all on a giant "lazy Susan," so they could have that red line land at barricade 2. Well, first it lands some meters above that point, and then there's the ignored downward angle, yet again, and then the blame drops right on the cops.

Barricade Shooting?

Situ video notes discharge from a Berkut weapon at barricade 2, at one point in the long video 3, but not at the moment Parashchuk is shot. They argue that the fatal shot were fired from there, but it is odd how it wound up less visible than other shots. Or do they have an alibi of not shooting then? 

Shot from Behind? 

Professor Katchanovski, at ConsortiumNews, raised one ill-founded question here:

"In the case of Yuriy Parashchuk, forensic medical examinations found that his entry and exit wounds were in the back of his head on the left side. But the 3D analysis moved the entry wound location to the front area and changed its somewhat top-to-bottom direction to nearly horizontal. Frames from a video by a French photographer shows a large bullet hole in the back of Parashchuk’s red helmet. How can he be shot in the back of his head by the Berkut police on a nearly similar horizontal level?"

The 2021 report continued this:

"[F]orensic medical examinations by the government experts for the prosecution, a testimony of his sister at the trial, and a single bullet hole in his helmet in synchronized videos show that Yuri Parashchuk was killed in the back of his head when he faced the Berkut police. This evidence suggest that he was shot from the Bank Arkada in the Maidan-controlled area. (See Video Appendix H)."

But he's seen facing roughly SE towards police line, with the bank to his right, not behind. Helmet and damage - apparent bullet entry - visible early in this video, but I'm not sure what side that is.

It's not clear to me that Situ shifted the entry to the front; the parietal region is large, starting just about where they placed the entry wound. Maybe medical photos clarify that point. The medical report does describe entry and exit wounds, confusingly, at the same spot, but it also describes the path between them as "front to the back" besides a little from the top to the bottom. If that were backward, then it's backwards in the medical report too, and real angle would be from behind and slightly UP. That makes no sense, except maybe for a Hotel Ukraine basement window. 

The medical report could be wrong, but Katchanovski doesn't seem to suspect this, and unless there's better evidence (like contradictory photographs), it's best to defer. IF the helmet damage suggests an opposite trajectory, it's probably because Parashchuk was wearing it backwards. 

Furthermore, he topples backwards, probably due to the bullet's velocity in that direction. There's a sidewalk impact just ahead of him a moment earlier - hitting at the base of a low wall on the southeast side, making a puff of concrete dust. That probably came from ahead, not from behind Paraschuk. And the dust seems propelled to the left and down the street, maybe because that shot also came from ahead and to the camera's right.

Mapping

video 4: distance from camera in a range between 72 meters (between Barricade #1 and Parashchuk) up to 245] m = between Barricade #1 and Barricade #2. Video #5 - near Barricade #1 to beyond Barricade #2.

3 plausible directions to the left in red, and 3 to the right in orange - best fit for injury and collapse is straight ahead (white) or the nearest positions to the left or right. That's at Specialized school No. 94 "Hellada" at Olhynska St, 2/4 - a spot I know nothing about. An open balcony there is also noted in green, but it's probably too low and too open to work. The best elevation is available some degrees to the right, at Arcade Bank, SE end, which also seems possible, given the victim's actual position. A left angle also seems plausible, but 10 Insytutska st. seems a bit too short to fit the bill. Barricade 1 is ruled out by being too far left, relative to the victim's actual position, and also the Berkut had no jetpacks. 

Conclusion

As noted above, SITU claimed this sniper modeling was done "in the service of human rights fact-finding and reporting." It was used in court in efforts to convict certain men who could be innocent, at the risk of absolving the true killers, and in the service of cementing a rather dubious narrative as legal fact. Over and over, we can see their modeling errors happen de-elevate the shooters to street level, and to tweak the injuries, postures, or spatial orientation of the victims, always to the effect of pointing to the police barricades. That is a politically useful direction for the Ukrainian prosecutors, for their bosses, and for their foreign backers. Would they have commissioned the study otherwise? 

If only solicited expert distortions can make their case, and only this well, after having the chance to select three best examples ... the prosecutors must realize their case is deeply, deeply flawed. But they flaunt it because that's their job, and the authors get it approved by others doing their jobs. Those foreign, "Euro-Atlantic" backers have ways of compromising or running foundations to finance little magic shows just like this, and the New York Times, for one, can be counted on to help elevate it into millions of minds, as a newsworthy "fact" of global relevance. It's not clear how conscious they are of all this, but ... it's hard to imagine so many distortions were modeled in accidentally, with no one at SITU noticing. 

Buildings Review

New IDs - maybe someone has info on them. 

* Instytutska St, 10 - 2-story - includes Committee on construction, town planning and housing and communal services. It's next to police barricade 2, but they may have been too busy to prevent someone breaking in by a back door. - showed it above - no muzzle flashes I can see, no movement on the roof, but ... it's better than invisible Berkut floating above their barricade to the left.

* Specialized school No. 94 "Hellada" at Olhynska St, 2/4 - 4 story - center of map below, just south of "140" - not as close to the barricade, so likely more accessible to false-flag criminals, and with better elevation, and not much greater distance. It's not visible from many views, but would overlook the metro station and some exposed positions, like Mr. Parashchuk. 

In front of the latter, a low, open balcony of another building is probably unsuitable, but would have the same view. Behind it not so far is the taller 1 Bankova street, but it's just outside the estimated shooting distances, from Knox and Associates, for these 3 cases. for what it's worth, further out is the much taller 18A Instytutska st.

I had looked into sniper positions before, in 2014. I wrote this, and it's not bad: Who was Maidan snipers' mastermind? - OrientalReview.org - map from this is below. Glad I made it. I somehow underrated the clarity of fire from the hotel, being overly-focused on new spots, to be special. I might do the same here, but ... well, I gave the reasons why those are my special suggestions. 

BBC's Gatehouse had reported on sniper fire from Hotel Ukraine, then asked around for a later report. He had people suggest the Nat bank building and Bankova st. 1 as relevant sniper perches, presumably government-held. The latter does stand out, perhaps tall enough to overcome that distance. On the same line but closer and more likely relevant, Instytutska St, 10 (not noted on the map - at center under the word "barricade"). 

I had noted a closer "Minister's Club" - presumably government-held, but perhaps overrun. I forget now exactly why, but it might be a contender for any shooting that did come from around barricade 2, especially if it seemed bit left and a bit high for them. Arcade Bank panned out. I was fixated on the NW wing, but some cases might indicate its far, SE end. The "House of Chimeras" direction - from prosecutor general's update - is interesting. It points to this far end of the bank, which can matter for elevated shooting, and which came up. House of Chimeras can hardly fit unless it's an enormously tall place, which it isn't.

more sources

Did Police Kill These Protesters in Ukraine? What the Videos Show - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

CHRS Project Featured in the New York Times - Center for Human Rights Science - Carnegie Mellon University (cmu.edu)

IRF.UA "How it really happened: reconstruction of Euromaidan … ": 403 Forbidden

Situ "practice note" published in the Journal of Human Rights Practice in April 2018: Reconstructing Human Rights Violations Using Large Eyewitness Video Collections: The Case of Euromaidan Protester Deaths | Journal of Human Rights Practice | Oxford Academic (oup.com): paywalled

SITU partner Brad Samuels also gave a presentation on the Euromaidan Event Reconstruction as a visiting artist at Yale University in fall 2017. Bradley Samuels: Experiments at the Intersection of Art, Law and Innovation - YouTube

Critical response: Katchanovski, April 22, 2019 The Buried Maidan Massacre and Its Misrepresentation by the West (consortiumnews.com) 

Question Answered: Who Was Behind the 2014 Maidan Massacre? (internationalist.org)