Old Videos of ISIS Killings Shared Amid Afghanistan Crisis
The videos, although shared now as from Afghanistan, are old clips that show barbaric killings by ISIS.
The video is being shared in the context of the Afghanistan crisis.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
A 1:36-minute video compilation, which shows people being brutally killed, is being shared on social media in the backdrop of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, claiming that it shows the Taliban killing 'non-Islam people in the country'.
However, we looked into each video and found that most of them could be traced back to 2014 and were related to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
CLAIM
A Twitter user shared a shorter version of the clip and wrote, "What will say the world about this conditions in Afghanistan? Afghan Taliban terrorist continuously killing the non-Islamic people in Afghanistan, the world can allow them to be form government in that country! (sic)"
(Trigger Warning: Visuals can be distressing. Viewer discretion is advised)
An archive of the tweet can be found here.
An archived version of the video shared on social media can be accessed here.
The Quint received a query on the claim being made in the video on its WhatsApp tipline as well.
WHAT WE FOUND
The video being shared is a combination of six clips. We verified all the clips and found that most of them are old and have existed on the internet even before the humanitarian and political crisis unfolded in Afghanistan.
CLIP 1
We ran a reverse image search using Yandex and found the video posted on an Iranian news aggregator website 'AhlulBayt News Agency'. The visuals were posted on 22 September 2016. The headline read, "Horrific video: ISIS executes over 50 Iraqi Shia Muslims one by one."
We also found a report in the Daily Mail which mentioned that the footage was believed to have been released by the terror group.
One can also notice an ISIS flag on the top right corner of the frame.
Image has been highlighted to show the ISIS flag.
This is how the ISIS flag looks like.
The ISIS flag.
CLIP 2
When we performed a reverse image search on one of the keyframes, we found the screengrab of the video used in a Persian news agency named 'Shabestan News Agency'.
The story was published on 12 July 2015 and talked about the massacre at Iraq's Speicher airbase in June 2014.
On 12 June 2014, nearly 1,700 people – mostly unarmed Iraqi air force cadets – were reportedly killed by terror group Daesh militants (Arabic acronym for ISIL), at Camp Speicher in Iraq's Tikrit.
Multiple news reports by The New York Times, BBC and Al Jazeera reported on the incident.
CLIP 3
We came across a feature story on The New York Times published on 3 September 2014, which carried the same video clip.
The story was about an Iraqi military recruit who had escaped a massacre by the ISIS in Tikrit. The story mentioned that the video was from the same incident as mentioned above.
Further, an ISIS flag could be seen at the top left corner.
Video posted by NYT in 2014.
CLIP 4
We found a photo of this video being posted in an explainer on the Islamic State by The Guardian in 2014.
Here, too, you can see the flag of ISIS.
Video shows ISIS killings.
We could also find the photo being used in a video by CBS Evening News published in 2014 at around 50 seconds.
CLIP 5
On conducting a reverse image search we found this video uploaded to a website named 'video indirelim' on 7 December 2014. The description mentioned ISIS but we couldn't find any credible news report on this incident.
But even in this video, an ISIS flag can be seen and the fact that it was uploaded in 2014 makes it amply clear that it is not from present-day Afghanistan.
CLIP 6
A reverse image search on Google led us to a report on Daily Mail published on 29 July 2014.
The report mentioned that around the time of Ramadan, ISIS released a 36-minute video, showing people rounded up in truck, lying on the ground and being executed.
Screengrab from Daily Mail.
Clearly, these videos are not from current-day Afghanistan. However, news reports suggest that the UN chief Michelle Bachelet said that she had received reports of human rights violations by the Taliban, including executions.
She said this during her speech at the Human Rights Council on 24 August but gave no other detail.
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