Old Clip Shared as Recent Video of Taliban Stoning Man to Death

The 2018 video showed a 60-year-old man being stoned to death by the Islamic State for raping his daughter.

A video showing a man being stoned to death has been shared by several social media users with a claim that it shows the atrocities being carried out by the Taliban after taking over Afghanistan.

Since the Taliban took over the country, there have been several unverified reports of fighters attacking Afghan citizens.

However, we found news reports, published in 2018, that carried screenshots of the video. According to the reports, the incident took place in the Jowzjan province of Afghanistan where a 60-year-old man was stoned to death for raping his daughter by the Islamic State.

CLAIM

Sharing the video, one user said, "To those who say the #Taliban have changed, watch this horrifying footage from #Afghanistan of a man being stoned to death. This is who the Biden administration is appeasing."

Another Facebook page posted the same video and said, "Afghanistan Decends into Stone Age Rule Under Taliban Authorities."

We also found a tweet posted on Twitter in January 2019 ,which included a different claim.

It said, "In Afghanistan, a Christian woman is attacked by cowardly males, pummeled with stones. This is Sharia Law". The video was viewed over a million times and was retweeted and quote-tweeted over 5,000 times.

Similar captions were used by several other users of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, archives of which can be found here, here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using InVID WeVerify Google Chrome Extension, we fragmented the viral video into several keyframes and conducted a reverse image search on some keyframes.

The search results lead us to an article on a website called Shafaqna news. The article carried the screenshots of the viral video. The headline when translated from Persian using Google Translate said, "ISIL "stoned" a man in Jowzjan."

The video, quoting BBC, said that a 60-year-old man was stoned to death for raping his daughter. We then conducted a keyword search using Persian and found the BBC article, which talked about the incident. The article was published on 22 June 2018 and the incident took place earlier that year.

According to the BBC report, the man was from Mongol village of Darzab district and his body was buried without any prayers. Similar reports were also found in other Persian language news reports.

It is, however, important to note that there have been reports accusing the Taliban of killing civilians in Panjshir province recently.

Clearly, an old video from 2018 of a man being stoned to death by ISIL was shared by social media users as the Taliban killing a person in Afghanistan after taking over the country.

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