Fact Check: Old video from Sweden shared as Israeli cop strangling Palestinian boy

Hyderabad: A video of a policeman assaulting a boy lying on the ground is going viral on social media, with users claiming that the video shows an Israeli police officer choking a Palestinian child to death.

A Facebook user shared the video with the claim, “An Israeli police officer choked a Palestinian child to death on Saturday during a protest at the American embassy in Jerusalem. The innocent boy even said the Shahada before his death. To be even worst everyone is watching and nobody tried to stop the coward from killing the boy. So who is the terrorist now ??? WHOEVER SUPPORT SHITZRAEL PLEASE DO ME A FAVOR... Delete me from your friends list and F yourself. Share this video, let people know who do the real terror in the last 75 years. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video is from Sweden in 2019.

Upon a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we found the same video posted by the Facebook account, Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, on February 10, 2015. The caption mentioned that the video is from Sweden and shows a 9-year-old Muslim boy’s head being smashed to the ground by a security guard.

Taking this cue, we ran a relevant keyword search and came across a 2015 report by the Independent titled ‘Police investigate Swedish train station security guards for ‘assaulting’ young boy.” The report carried a screengrab from the video.

According to the report, the video shows a guard sitting on top of a prostrate nine-year-old boy in the station in the city of Malmo. The boy and his 12-year-old friend were detained by the guard after they travelled without a ticket.

According to the Swedish news website, The Local, the guard employed by security company Svensk Bevakningstjänst had detained the boy and his 12-year-old friend after they were thrown off a train for travelling without a ticket.

It also mentioned that two security guards at Malmo’s main train station are being investigated by the police for banging the nine-year-old boy’s head to the ground.