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I wouldn't call "In our source’s words" or "from two separate sources with access to [passport] databases" as public material on the Internet.

In fact, it very much reads as a classical parallel construction [1], e.g. some secret service identified the suspect through their work (anything from double agents to court-ordered wiretapping to illegal wiretapping) and back-fed details to some independent organization to create a train-of-thought from it and publish it. Especially since the public group photo is marked "[we] do not claim" and the truly exposing details come from secret databases from secret "sources". That is not public or verifiable information.

We had things like that here (here being a former eastern-bloc non-USSR country, where people are extra cautious of manipulations because being spoon fed with propaganda for 40 years) exposed fairly recently trough leaked wiretapping files. It was in all combinations. A journalist begging secret operatives to give her anything saying she would publish that immediately. Operatives feeding true information to unwitting journalists. And so on...

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction


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