Old Photo From Yemen Shared as ‘Security Check at Afghanistan Airport’

The photo of a Houthi soldier frisking a local was wrongly shared as security checks at an airport in Afghanistan.

A photograph of a man dressed in camouflage clothing frisking another armed person at what appears to be a checkpoint is going viral across social media platforms.

The photograph is being shared with a claim that it shows a security check at ‘Afghanistan airport’, as countries rush to evacuate their citizens from the country, which is now under the Taliban.

However, we found that the photograph has been on the internet for a few years. The photo was first shared on Twitter by Amjad Tadros, a news producer for American media outlet CBS News.

Tadros shared the photograph reminiscing his times in Yemen and noted that it showed a Houthi soldier searching a man entering a rally, where arms were allowed.

CLAIM

The photograph went viral on social media, where users shared it with the claim “Security check at Afghanistan airport”.

This post by one Mukesh Kapoor was shared more than 950 times at the time of writing this article. The claim was widely shared on Facebook.

More claims on Facebook and Twitter can be seen here, here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We ran a reverse image search on the photograph and found that it had been circulating on the internet for a few years.

One such instance was in a tweet by Waqar Younis, the former coach of Pakistan’s cricket team. Another user had retweeted Younis’ tweet to state that it shows Houthi fighters in Yemen.

Taking a clue from this, we added ‘Yemen’ as a keyword to the reverse image search and found a 2015 tweet with the same photo. The photograph was shared in July 2015 by Amjad Tedros, a Middle East producer for CBS News.

Tedros shared the image with the caption “Memories from #yemen: Houthi soldier searching a man going into a rally: Qat, daggers & machine guns allowed! (sic)”

We also found a tweet by Tedros from June 2015 of a CBS news report titled ‘Rare look inside battle-torn Yemen’. The report was uploaded to CBS’s verified YouTube channel on 16 June 2015.

In this report, we found a similar scene around the 01:21 mark, where people were being frisked at a checkpoint.

We compared the viral photo with the news report and found similarities between the two.

In both frames, a green lamp post along a brick-lined wall is visible. Additionally, a young man dressed in a khaki-coloured clothes is also seen frisking people.

In the viral photo, a man dressed in camouflage clothing, wearing a dark sleeveless jacket is seen checking a person. The same person can be seen in the CBS report as well, next to the young man.

The Quint contacted Amjad Tadros, who confirmed that he took the photograph in Yemen in June 2015. Corresponding over email, he said, "I took it in Sana'a old city at a Houthi rally."

Evidently, this photo does not show a security check at an Afghanistan airport. The photo is from 2015 and shows a Houthi soldier frisking a Yemeni local.

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