Authors
In the weeks following the Taliban’s capture of Afghanistan, multiple reports of human rights violations have surfaced.
Journalists attacked for covering protests within the country. Women’s rights have been curtailed, and reports of the Taliban’s atrocities have been rampant since they took over the country on 15 August 2021.
Amidst these developments, a video of a man stoned to death is viral on Twitter, claiming that it shows the Taliban’s brutal rule in Afghanistan.
The video has been posted several times on Twitter in the last few weeks and has garnered lakhs of views and thousands of likes.
Few Twitter users shared the video claiming, “This is who the Biden administration is appeasing,” as the evacuation of the United States from Afghanistan on 31 August left the country in complete control of the Taliban.
Fact Check/Verification
To check if the video is viral on Facebook, we performed a keyword search for ‘man stoned to death on the platform. We found several posts from August 2020 where the video was shared with the text, ‘In Afghanistan man stoned to death for raping a girl,’ indicating that the video is not recent.
To ascertain the source of the video, we performed a reverse image search on keyframes from the video. The result led us to various Persian news portals that reported the stone-pelting incident along with the photos that appear to be screenshots from the video.
A report published by an Iranian news portal didbaniran.ir in June 2018 reads “ISIL stoned to death in northern Afghanistan” when translated from Persian to English on Google Translate.
Links to other news portals which have covered the incident are here and here.
We found an article on BBC Persia with the headline ‘ISIL stoned to death in northern Afghanistan’ during our research.
According to the report published on 22 June 2018, the incident took place in the northern province of Jawzjan, controlled by the members of the terrorist organization – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
An eyewitness, who took part in the stone-pelting, told the BBC that the person (who was stoned) was a rape accused.
“The old man died in the incident, and his body was buried without the funeral prayer.”
Conclusion
An old video of stone pelting from 2018 is shared claiming to be the Taliban’s recent atrocities on the people of Afghanistan. Though the reports of human rights violations are emerging from Afghanistan, the viral video does not show the Taliban’s recent atrocities.
Result: False
Our Sources
BBC’s report on ‘ISIL stoned a man to death in northern Afghanistan’
Iranian news portal’s report on the incident didbaniran.ir
Report by Daily Afghanistan on ‘ISIL stoned a man in Jawzjan province’
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