Supported projects

KABUL - In the remote mountains of central Afghanistan, a Hazara family embarks on a quest for truth and justice after their daughter Zahra mysteriously dies at Kabul University.

ANTWERP/BRUSSELS - To understand how citizens weigh ethics against the law, Suzanne Roes decided to conduct research into criminalised movements above and below ground.

GHENT - In 2024, COPS, the elite team of police zone Ghent, was deployed several times against non-violent activists. Experts are concerned as the unit is increasingly being used for interventions against activists. As a result, the line between counterterrorism and interventions against activists sometimes becomes very thin and the proportionality and subsidiarity principles of the police are compromised.

DAMASCUS - Trapped in the dusty cells of northeastern Syria are thousands of foreign IS fighters, all having come with one goal: to establish an Islamic caliphate. They come from 50 countries such as Iraq and Lebanon, as well as France, Britain and Belgium. Five years after the fall of IS, they are prisoners in a legal no-man's land, often without charge or trial, written off by their home countries.

ANTWERP/ROTTERDAM - The ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam are the main European gateway for cocaine. Publicly, the Netherlands and Belgium proclaim their united commitment to breaking the backbone of the drug trade. But behind the scenes, differences in political culture are at play, and resentment and gloom reign.

OOSTAKKER - November 1967. The police raid the Martens-Sotteau orphanage in Oostakker. Following the report of a social worker, it is suspected that the children there are being abused. Father O., Capuchin and confessor, and the guardian P.J. were arrested.

BRUGGE - In Europe, children sometimes end up in prison. Not because they have done something wrong, but because they are the (unborn) child of a convicted, accused or interned woman. Bruges prison even has a special ward where young children can live with their imprisoned mothers.

BRUSSELS - How do you get declared insanity in Belgium? Journalist Thomas Detombe looked into it and came across serious shortcomings. The decision is made by the judge, who bases it on a psychiatric expert's report. A psychiatrist draws up the report; the judge almost always follows it.

BRUSSELS – A huge amount of art was stolen during World War II. The Nazis looted art from occupied countries and brought it to Germany, where they established ambitious collections. The story of what happened to Belgian art has yet to be told. How did paintings by Memling, Van der Weyden, Bruegel, Jordaens and Cranach leave the country so easily? The Nazis looted homes, stole art and forced owners to sell, spending millions of Reichsmarks in the process.

CAIRO - This year, Egypt is hosting the international climate summit COP27. An African first of symbolic importance, but international organisations like Amnesty International point to the serious abuses in Egyptian prisons. They see the Egyptian presidency as an attempt to polish the regime's image before the international community.

RIO DE JANEIRO - Vila Cruzeiro is one of Rio de Janeiro's most dangerous slums. People are living in poverty surrounded by a drug war. After far-right president Jair Bolsonaro took office, shootings between police and traffickers are much more frequent. Violence in the neighbourhoods is only increasing.

NIVELLES - State police commander Léon François starts using questionable investigative methods in the fight against drug traffickers in the 1970s, without legal regulation. Who are the gangsters and who is the police? The boundaries blur. Top cops and politicians, ex-premier Vanden Boeynants in the lead, watch and do not intervene. François is convicted, but the case never really gets cleared up. A lot of serious crimes are never solved.

What is the involvement of Belgian jihadists in the genocide that IS carried out against the Jezidi community? Now that the Belgian parliament has acknowledged the genocide, Brenda Stoter Boscolo and Bruno Struys went to Iraqi Kurdistan with that question in mind. They talked to official sources, but above all had hours of interviews with the Yezidis themselves.

BRUSSELS - What happened to Dieumerci Kanda? Six years ago, the Angolan man entered a Brussels police station to report his missing wallet. For no apparent reason, he is arrested and locked up in a cell. Three hours later he's dead. The official explanation is that he killed himself. But isn't there more to it?

MERKSPLAS - March 2020. Corona shuts down Belgium. Everyone has to stay inside. Door closed, one hour a day outside. A story that sounds familiar to the residents of Merksplas prison.

BRUSSELS - A lot goes wrong with our tax collection. There are so many loopholes that the tax authorities collect a lot less than what the state is entitled to. This is one of the reasons why the government has to borrow and why we have a large national debt.

CAPETOWN - South Africa is seen as the most western country in Africa. It is not being investigated by the International Criminal Court, but is however planning to leave it. What is going on?

MOSCOW - Nostalgia or Revolution? Pieter Stockmans and photographer Mashid Mohadjerin travel through a number of important cities in European Russia to capture the revolutionary forces in 2017, 100 years after the Russian revolution of 1917.

BRUSSELS - Since 1999, companies are subject to appear before criminal courts for the crimes they commit. How often did this happen? When did it not happen? For what reason? What punishment did the public prosecutor ask for if the case did go to court? And what punishment did the judge pronounce?

GENEVA - The 20th century has been marked by the granting of a wide range of rights to different segments of society. But for some of these rights, we haven't yet found the ideal democratic ways of organising them. Three cases.

PALERMO - An investigation into the contemporary Italian mafia in Europe. Or how the mafia made its way to the Low Countries.

BRUSSELS - A completely new view on the Fortis-case and especially on the very closed deliberation procedure in the magistracy. Wim Van den Eyndes book Fortisgate raises serious questions about the functioning of the judiciary in Belgium.

BRUSSELS - In the Netherlands, it has been possible for years: a visit to the Nationaal Archief (National Archive) to find out what your grandfather or grandmother's wartime past was. In Belgium, however, these archives remain closed, for fear that 'certain passions' will flare up. Anoek Nuyens and Lynn Berger on the struggle of historians and archivists for more openness.

ANTWERP - Smuggling, fraud and tax evasion have been the order of the day in the diamond business in Antwerp for decades. The diamond merchants in the 'Square Mile' are living in a vacuum, in a social and judicial bubble that is sustained in part because of the cooperation of politicians and magistrates.

NIVELLES - 17 Raids between 1982 and 1985, 28 dead, more than 40 injured, barely 175,000 euros in loot and no one convicted. The Nivelles Gang is the largest unresolved judicial file in Belgium. Hilde Geens did what someone rarely does: she read the judicial files about the Nivelles Gang and discovered that she was being deceived.

SAINTIAGO DE COMPOSTELA - This book is based on thirty memorable life stories of youngsters who set out on a walk. How do they remember the trek? How do they look back on it? What did that journey mean for the rest of their lives? Also thirty compagnons voice their thoughts - parents, counselors and juvenile court judges.