*The former child porn researcher had subjected his daughter to years of sexual abuse *
A child rapist who worked for five years with the Western OSINT agency Bellingcat killed himself shortly before he was due to be imprisoned, recently published Dutch court documents reveal.
The operative, known under the alias Daniel Romein, took his life in 2022 after being sentenced to prison for sexually abusing his own daughter.
Romein had been involved in the investigation of the MH17 crash by the Western-funded “open-source intelligence” group, as well as in the Stop Child Abuse initiative, dedicated to geolocating explicit materials involving minors.
The news was first made public by independent Dutch journalist Eric Van De Beek last month, and the surrounding events were further explored in a piece released by The Grayzone last Friday.
Van De Beek said that Romein hadn’t died from “cardiac arrest” in December 2022 as previously reported, stating a close friend had confirmed that the ex-Bellingcat operative had taken his own life.
The researcher, who worked for Bellingcat between 2014 and late 2019, was sentenced to 36 months in prison earlier that year for prolonged sexual abuse of his daughter, the journalist claimed, citing an anonymized court case on the matter. The case was released by Dutch authorities only in March of this year after repeated inquiries by independent media, Van De Beek noted.
[…]
The court materials quote a lackluster letter of apology sent by the defendant to his daughter when the scandal became public, in which he appeared to blame her.
The case also revealed that the defendant had been convicted of possession of child pornography “over 15 years” prior.
Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins, when questioned by The Grayzone, denied that Romein’s firing in December 2019 had been related to his criminal past.
In August 2021, Romein was stripped of his European Press Prize, which had been awarded for his work on the Stop Child Abuse project. At the time, the Netherlands-based non-profit cited “unidentified substantiated complaints” from different individuals as the reason for its decision. (RT)
[Bellingcat founder Eliot] Higgins did not respond to requests for clarity on why Romein was suddenly terminated after five years of work with his organization.
[…]
The shocking revelation that Bellingcat relied on a convicted pedophile to handle its investigations into child sexuality exploitation has effectively been buried by legacy media outlets, which frequently cited the organization to accuse designated enemy states of everything from chemical attacks to assassinations. (Grayzone)
Grayzone piece: https://thegrayzone.com/2025/05/02/bellingcat-operative-dies-conviction/