Crime Archive

The German government announced earlier this month that it believed Russian agents were responsible for the killing of a Georgian asylum-seeker who was murdered in Berlin last summer in broad daylight. The incident had all the hallmarks of a Russian state-orchestrated assassination: The target was a known anti-Kremlin rebel, and the prime suspect, who was taken into custody just hours after the murder, was a Russian man with a criminal record who had traveled to Germany on a fake passport less than a week before the killing. Yet despite ample evidence, the German government for months was cautious in publicly […]

Operation Car Wash, or Lava Jato as it is known in Brazil, is widely regarded as the biggest corruption investigation in history. It has ensnared some of the biggest and most powerful Brazilian companies, and its investigators have brought charges against hundreds of businessmen, officials and politicians, including former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, widely known as Lula. Its proponents say that Lava Jato has been a welcome cleansing force in a graft-ridden part of the world, but its impartiality has been called into question. According to hacked messages published by the online investigative news outlet The Intercept earlier […]

While all eyes seemed to be on the impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee in Washington this week, another judicial drama was unfolding at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. On Thursday, Helen Brady, a lawyer for the ICC’s chief prosecutor, argued that the court overstepped its mandate in April when it rejected the prosecutor’s request to open a formal investigation into alleged atrocities and abuses committed by U.S., Afghan and Taliban forces in the war in Afghanistan. It is a case that could have profound implications not only for President Donald Trump’s promise to negotiate an end […]