Amid the escalating violent conflict between Israel and Palestine, a video is circulating on social media platforms claiming that it shows Israeli police personnel strangling a Palestinian child to death. Further the post claims that the incident had taken place during the Palestinians protest against moving the US embassy to Jerusalem. Additionally, the post adds that the assaulted boy had chanted Kalima Shahadah Islamic prayer minutes before he died.
Fact Crescendo received many fact-check requests about this video on our WhatsApp FactLine (9049053770).
The caption of the post mentions “An Israeli police man strangles a Palestinian Child to death on Saturday during the protest of US embassy move to the Jerusalem. The innocent boy even read Kalima e shahadat before dying. Despite many attempts by groups to upload this video to the Youtube, its been consistently removed and deleted from google, Facebook and youtube. pls make this video viral so that it reaches all the media.”
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Fact Check-
We started our investigation by breaking the video into small keyframes by using InVid-We Verify tool and running a Yandex reverse image search on them. The results led us to the same video published on Youtube by a user on 10th February 2015 with the title mentioning that 2 Swedish policemen arrested two 9-year-old Muslim children.
The description of the video states that “In Malmö, Sweden, two security officers arrested two 9-year-old children who had not paid their fare at the train station. Eyewitness reports said that one of the officers bashed the 9-year-olds.
Next, we ran a keyword search on Google taking a cue from the above video which led us a news report published by The Independent UK on 12th February 2015. According to the article, a Swedish security guard at the Malmo train station assaulted a 9-year-old boy and his friend for travelling on the train without a ticket. The security guard had reportedly smashed the boy to the ground and held his hands over the boy’s mouth and face. In his apparent state of distress, the boy had recited the Islamic prayer, Shahada. The security guards had detained the assaulted boy and his friend on the charges of travelling on the train without a ticket. The assaulted boy in the video did not die. The two security guards who were involved in this assault were taken into police custody after they were caught on camera violently detaining the two children at the Malmo train station.
This incident was reported by several other international media as well in 2015 stating that the incident took place in Sweden.
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Conclusion- Fact Crescendo found the above-mentioned post to be False. The viral video does not show Israeli police personnel strangling a Palestinian child to death. The video dates back to 2015 when 2 Swedish policemen arrested two 9-year-old Muslim children on charges of travelling on the train without a ticket. The assaulted boy in the video did not die.
Title:2015 video from Sweden viral as Israeli police strangling a Palestinian child to death
Fact Check By: Aavya RayResult: False
