Old, Unrelated Visuals of ISIS Executing People Falsely Linked to Hamas

This video is from Iraq and shows ISIS executing four queer men in 2015.
Khushi Mehrotra
WebQoof
Published:

Fact-Check: This video dates back to 2015 from Iraq and is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. 

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(Source: Altered by The Quint

<div class="paragraphs"><p>Fact-Check: This video dates back to 2015 from Iraq and is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.&nbsp;</p></div>
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(Trigger Warning: Visuals can be distressing for some audiences.)

A video showing two people throwing another person off the roof of a building is being shared on social media.

What is the claim?: Users have claimed that it shows Hamas 'executing' people by throwing them from the roof of a building.

An archive of the post can be found here

This post recorded 17.6K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

What is the truth?: This claim is false.

  • This video dates back to 2015 and shows the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) throwing four men, who reportedly belonged to the LGBTQ+ community, from a roof of a building in Fallujah, Iraq

How did we find out?: We divided the viral video into several keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

  • We came across a story by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) from 1 July 2015 which reported on ISIS killing four men by throwing them off the roof of a building for being queer in Iraq's Fallujah province.

  • We matched the visuals in the report with a frame in the viral video and found similarities.

Here are the similarities between the two frames. 

  • Further, we ran a relevant keyword search and came across a news report by media organisation The Mirror, which noted that four queer men were tied and blindfolded before being thrown off the building.

  • This was not an isolated incident. The ISIS had also executed queer individuals in Syria, as reported by NBC News in August 2015.

Conclusion: It is clear that the video does not show Hamas killing people. The video dates back to 2015 showing ISIS killing queer men by throwing them off a building in Iraq.

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