Photo From Chile Falsely Shared as ‘Israeli Soldier Killing Palestinian Child'

The photo dates back to October 2016 and shows the Chilean military police's lieutenant F Venegas in Valparaíso.

A photograph showing a man kneeling on a young person's neck is being shared across social media platforms, claiming that it shows an Israeli soldier killing a Palestinian child.

The Quint received a query for this claim's verification on its WhatsApp tipline.

(Archives of more posts with the same claim can be seen here and here.)

Is it true?: No. The photo has been on the internet since 2016 and shows F Venegas, a Chilean military police personnel.

How did we find out?: In the viral photo, the man's name tag reads 'F Venegas V'.

We ran a reverse image search on the photo with this keyword, which led us to a Facebook post from 2020. This post mentioned the location of the photo as Chile.

Adding Chile as a keyword, we looked for more information on the photograph.

This led us a to an article on Chilean radio station ADN Radio's website, where an article with this photo was published in October 2016.

• A translated version of the article identified the man as Second Lieutenant F Venegas, who reportedly kneeled on a bleeding young man's neck while arresting him in Valparaíso, Chile.

• It mentioned that the photo was first shared on Facebook page called Frente Fotográfico, a Chilean photography collective.

• On their page, we found that a post with the same photo was uploaded on 3 October 2016.

• Translated to English, the caption identified the person as Diego, who was allegedly assaulted again after being taken to the police station. It added that Diego's family was considering filing a complaint against the police officer, sublieutenant Venegas.

• This clearer version of the photo shows an insignia with two crossed guns on Venegas' arm.

• On comparing this insignia to that of armed forces in Chile, we found that the patch showed the insignia of Chile's military police.

The same photo was also shared in a report on Chilean newspaper El Mostrado's website in October 2016.

Conclusion: An old photo from Chile is being shared to falsely claim that it shows an Israeli soldier killing a Palestinian child.

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