Video Verification: The Iraqi Flag Waver
Steven Nabil claims to be a correspondent and frequently posts videos and news regarding attacks against Iraqis. I will try to verify if his claims regarding a video he posted on October 7, depicting an Iraqi flag-waver being shot at from an unknown shooter. I will verify this video by examining events around the time this video was posted, determining the video’s location, and verifying the identity of the person who was shot at in the video.
First, I looked into news events happening in Iraq at the time this video was posted. A quick Google news search on October 7 shows that protests were erupting in the city of Baghdad.
By searching on Twitter, I came across many posts regarding protests with the trending hashtag of #save_the_lraqi_people. This hashtag brought up more results and videos of demonstrators and live gunfire.
On October 8, Reuters posted this article explaining the current situation in Baghdad.
“More than 110 people have been killed and 6,000 wounded in the uprising, the worst violence since the Islamic State caliphate was crushed two years ago. Reuters journalists have witnessed snipers killing and wounding protesters by firing into crowds from rooftops.”
Many news articles also stated snipers were shooting at protestors, so I narrowed my search results on Twitter to “snipers” in Arabic for October 7. This method would be very helpful.
Not only did this search bring up the original video I was trying to verify, but it also brought up results for a video of the same flag-waver from a different perspective. From this perspective, we can see that there is a minaret in the background as the sun is setting. By continuing to search under this hashtag I found that one Tweet provides a geographical clue on where the video could have been taken.
“This demonstrator in Palestine Street in Baghdad flying the Iraqi flag before being killed by a sniper bullet named Ali Abdul Abbas What are you doing …?”
I searched for “Palestine Street” on google maps. After driving up and down Palestine street looking for a mosque that might match the minaret in the second video, I realized that Palestine street was in close proximity to the Ministry of Oil.
In my earlier research, I came across a EuroNews article related to the protests and I came across articles saying riot police and the army were dispersed in the area around the Oil Ministry. With this information, I could narrow our search results and found the Mosque of Tayeb on the same street as the Ministry of Oil. The mosque was on the north side of the street. The exact location I had expected it to be located based on the setting of the sun in the video. Pictures of the minaret also matched the one in the video.
In the video, we see the flag-waver being shot down and then dragged to the side near a lamp post. By looking at the map we can see shadows of the lamposts and determine the exact location of where our flag-waver was shot.
With the research from news articles surrounding this event, we can determine that this video actually took place in Baghdad around October 4-7 as the original tweet from Steven Nabil claimed. The flag-waver most likely was shot by Iranian snipers based on the reports from various media outlets stating that snipers were positioned to shoot at protesters. With the exact location determined we can match this with other reports stating that violence was present on that day on the street where the video was taken.
