[WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT]
On October 8, Steven Nabil, a journalist at the US-funded TV network Al Hurra News, shared a video on Twitter that showed a man waving a flag and then being shot on the street. He tagged it #Iraq suggesting that the video was taken during ongoing unrest in Iraq.
Here’s the full video:
During the week of October 1-7, Iraqis took to the streets in what began as peaceful demonstrations against government corruption. Soon, violence broke out, with security forces using tear gas, rubber bullets, and eventually live ammunition to quell the protests.
Social media was flooded with images and videos of shrapnel wounds and men shot down in the street, all claiming to originate in Iraq. This video was one of many depicting a seemingly senseless act of violence against a peaceful protester. But does the video actually show what it claims?
This investigation will assess the legitimacy of the video above, geolocate the spot where the event occurred, and determine when the event took place. It will also provide context for the event and attempt to discover the identity of the victim as well as the shooters.
What was happening in Iraq when the video was posted?
Between October 1 and 7, 2019, an estimated 111 Iraqis, most of them protesters, were killed in Baghdad, according to an official government inquiry. The overall death toll across Iraq, including Baghdad and southern provinces, is 157.
Anti-government protests first erupted in Baghdad on the first day of October, decrying poor public services, corruption, and unemployment under the government of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi. In an effort to quell the unrest, the government instituted a curfew and an Internet blackout on the night of October 2, according to The New York Times.
Despite the intermittent Internet blackouts, social media was flooded with videos of military forces firing at protesters. On October 7, the Iraqi military first admitted to using “excessive force” to disperse protesters, claiming that they’ve begun “to hold accountable those commanding officers who carried out these wrong acts.”
Since then, the Iraqi government has convened a panel to determine who was accountable for shooting at protesters. The panel, which published its findings—including the estimated number of deaths—on October 22, reported that “officers and commanders lost control over their forces during the protests (and this) caused chaos.” According to Reuters, the report found that over 70% of deaths were caused by shots to head or the chest, but concluded that there were no official orders from the authorities to open fire or use live ammunition.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released a Human Rights Special Report on October 22, condemning “violations of the right to life, including deliberate killings of unarmed protesters and excessive use of force by units deployed to manage the demonstrations” in Iraq between October 1 and 9.
Was the video really shot in Iraq?
Yes. I was able to geolocate the video to a specific street in Baghdad, Iraq.
A Twitter search for “Baghdad” from the period of October 1-9 produced several other videos that appear to have been taken on the same street as the video Steven Nabil posted.
This video, posted by @IRaqiRev, an account that’s been very active during the protests, shows a different man shot by sniper fire on what appears to be the same road.
https://twitter.com/IRaqiRev/status/1181309399891087365
We see a road of similar width, with road divider blocks in the middle and architecture that closely resembles that in the original video. (Note the ambulance that passes by at 1:31, as it will be important later.)
Although it doesn’t look like the same house, it is possible that the two videos were shot in the same area. What’s important in this Tweet is that it identifies a possible location, the Mohammed Al-Qasim Bridge in Baghdad. While I wasn’t able to find a landmark under that name, I did locate the Mohammed Al-Qasim Expressway, which runs through Baghdad, between the Tigris river and the Sadr City district (where the October 1-9 protests were concentrated, according to The New York Times, among others).
The Mohamed Al-Qasim Expressway runs through the Rusafa district of central Baghdad, where according to the official UNAMI report the protests were concentrated. This finding helps to narrow down the area where the original video could have been shot.
Another video, posted on October 9 by an unverified account with the #Baghdad, shows an ambulance pulling out of a driveway and being shot at by snipers.
حتى سيارات الاسعاف ما خلصت منهم #Baghdad pic.twitter.com/KSKYT84PNR
— Ayad Kreem (@ayadkrem33) October 9, 2019
We’ve already seen an ambulance with the same red crescent half moon on its side in the @IRaqiREV video above. It is not clear whether it is the same ambulance as only side of the vehicle is visible in each video.
In @ayadkrem33’s video, there are similar palm trees and a road divider that appear in all other videos examined so far, although it’s not yet possible to confirm that all three videos were shot on the same road. Nonetheless, the presence of ambulances with a distinctive identifying symbol (the red crescent half moon) suggest that there may be a hospital nearby—this, too, will be useful for geolocating the original video later.
Notably, @ayadkrem33’s video briefly shows the same houses that appear in the video that Steven Nabil posted on his Twitter. This finding establishes a connection between the three videos seen so far: both @IRaqiREV and @ayadkrem33 posts show similar ambulance cars, while @ayadkrem33 and Steven Nabil’s posts appear to briefly show the same row of houses on the side of the road where the shootings occur. It is therefore likely that all three events occurred in the same area of Baghdad.
In the @ayadkrem33 video, there is also a distinct road sign, that reads, in Arabic: Presidency of the Court of Appeals (محكمة الاستئناف).
A Google Maps search of central Baghdad reveals only one court of appeals—the Rusafa Court of Appeals (محكمة استئناف الرصافة), located off the Mohammed Al-Qasim Expressway, next to a Neurosurgery Teaching Hospital (مستشفى الجملة العصبية).
The original video of the flag-waving protester was thus likely shot somewhere in the vicinity of these three landmarks.
Another video, posted in response to a Tweet from a verified account of Iraqi comedian Ahmed Albasheer that called attention to the violence in Iraq, shows the same shooting from a different angle. (#save_the_iraqi_people, used by the user @TheRealEzzi who shared the video, is a recurring hashtag that was used during the protest to share images and videos from Iraq throughout October.)
Video proving how the #IraqiProtesters are getting sniped from unknown security forces!#save_the_iraqi_people#العراق_ينتقض pic.twitter.com/WsHCSi0AGv
— Ezzi (@EzziReal) October 6, 2019
Just like in the original video, there is a man waving a flag back and forth before being shot by a sniper and collapsing. There are four men running toward the victim from his right side and from behind while a tire also rolls out from his right toward the body.
A tall palm tree and some greenery are also visible in both videos behind or to the right of the victim. In both videos, there is also the distinct road divider, which the man approaches as he waves the flag before being shot.
Knowing that @TheRealEzzi’s video shows the same event, I was able to use an identifying landmark, the mosque, to find a more specific location. Searching for ‘mosque’ in English on Google Maps shows several mosques in the vicinity of the Mohammed Al-Qasim Expressway, but none of their minarets resemble the one in the video. I then searched for mosques in Arabic (مسجد) and located the “Mosque of Tayeb” (جامع الطيب), across the road from the Teaching Hospital and just off the Al-Qasim Expressway.
Comparing its minaret to the one in the video confirms that it is the same mosque.
Because the minaret appears to the right of the road on which the protester with the flag is shot, it’s possible to figure out name of the street where the video was shot—the Bur Said Street.
Using Google Earth, I was able to determine the approximate spot from which the video posted by @TheRealEzzi was shot.
Using all the above evidence, I was thus able to determine that the Bur Said Street in the Rusafa district of central Baghdad in Iraq is where the video that Steven Nabil shared was shot.
When was the video shot?
Sometime before October 5.
Based on @TheRealEzzi video, posted at 3:37 AM on October 6, I know that the video was shot earlier than October 8, the date that Steven Nabil shared the video being verified. In the video, it appears that the sun is setting when the shooting occurs, so it is possible that the video was shot the day before it was posted, on the evening of October 5.
From the UNAMI official report, it’s also known that protests intensified between October 2 and October 5 in the Rusafa district. However, it is possible for the video to have been shot prior to this timeframe.
Who was the man waving the flag?
I did not have enough information to verify who the man in the video Steven Nabil posted is.
Mohammed al Arab, a war correspondent based out of Bahrain, posted a video similar to @TheRealEzzi’s depicting the same shooting on his verified Twitter account.
فخامة الرئيس @BarhamSalih
— Mohammed Al arab (@malarab1) October 6, 2019
دولة الرئيس @AdilAbdAlMahdi
رئيس البرلمان @AlHaLboosii
هذا المتظاهر في شارع فلسطين في بغداد يرفرف بالعلم العراقي قبل ان تقتله رصاصة قناص اسمه علي عبدالعباس ما انتم فاعلون …؟ pic.twitter.com/YePVl7iTFM
In it, he claims that the man who was shot is Ali Abdul Abbas, shot for flying the Iraqi flag. I did not find any other information verifying the identity of the victim. However, the tweet also claims that the shooting takes place on Palestine Street, which is not the correct location. In addition, the flag the protester is waving is not the Iraqi flag. The flag is green with white or yellow writing on it, and is similar to those flown by other protesters in Iraq—however, it’s not the Iraqi flag.
Who was shooting?
It’s unclear who the snipers active during the Baghdad protests were. Both the Iraqi government in its official inquiry and UN Assistance Mission to Iraq confirmed the presence of snipers during the week of protests but failed to identify them.
The UNAMI report found that protesters in Baghdad were subjected to sniper fire, “targeted deliberately by individuals positioned on roofs and in vacant buildings.”
The Iraqi government’s panel findings confirmed that snipers were active during the demonstrations, citing “shells from a sniper rifle” in an abandoned building in central Baghdad as evidence. However, the report does not identify the snipers or determine whether they were part of the Iraqi security forces deployed to put down the protests.
Last week, two Iraqi security officials told Reuters, under the conditions of anonymity, that the snipers in Baghdad were part of an Iran-backed militia and did not report to the Iraqi military. According to the two anonymous officials, leaders of paramilitary groups in Iraq “decided on their own to help put down the mass protests” and deployed snipers. Their efforts were allegedly directed by Abu Zainab al-Lami, head of security for the Hashid, a group of Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim paramilitaries. A spokesperson for the Hashid denied these allegations and said the group took no part in the violence.
Many comments under the video Steven Nabil posted allege that the snipers are in fact Iranian or Iran-affiliated paramilitary members, but none of those claims could be verified.
Summary of Findings:
- This video shows a protester being shot on the Bur Said Street in the Rusafa District of central Baghdad, Iraq.
- This video was shot sometime before October 5, 2019.
- The man in the video could not be identified.
- The affiliation of the snipers could not be confirmed.