Video shows Syrians executed in 2013, not 'Turkish builders killed after 2023 quake'

Warning: distressing footage

"In Turkey, the government shot all the contractors who ignored guidelines while building flats and structures," reads part of the Hindi-language caption of a video shared on Facebook here on April 1, 2023.

The four-minute 35-second video, which has been viewed more than 450 times, shows several blindfolded men being forced into an open pit before they are shot by people in military fatigues.

The post says the government had paid them to install seismic dampers in the foundations of buildings, but they used car tyres instead.

"Thus the government acted and set all the contractors on fire along with the tyres," it says. "This is how corruption ends."

Image

Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on April 6, 2023

The video was shared in similar posts on Facebook here and here; and on Twitter here. AFP previously debunked Spanish-language posts sharing the same video alongside the same claim.

Turkish officials announced a rapid series of investigations and arrests linked to the country's construction and development business following a catastrophic 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck its southeast and neighbouring Syria on February 6.

More than 55,000 people were killed in the violent tremor, which collapsed tens of thousands of buildings without warning as many people slept.

Turkish media -- nearly all of which is under the government's direct or indirect control -- vocally criticised developers for using shoddy materials and failing to comply with construction codes, sparking speculation that officials were looking for scapegoats for the disaster.

The video shared on social media, however, was filmed in Syria in 2013.

Syria executions

A reverse image search on Google found screenshots from the video used in a blog post on a Japanese blogging platform from May 1, 2022.

The blog's Japanese-language title reads, "Syrian Genocide 2013: a story of a new mass execution video from the Assad regime side that has emerged only now".

Syria has been fighting a bloody and complex civil war since 2011 when pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring uprisings were brutally repressed. The conflict has claimed more than 500,000 lives and left millions displaced.

A subsequent search found an April 28, 2022 article from the Turkish news agency Anadolu, citing a report published in British newspaper The Guardian.

The Guardian article, published on April 26, 2022, is headlined, "Massacre in Tadamon: how two academics hunted down a Syrian war criminal".

It contains several screenshots and clips of the massacre.

Below is a screenshot comparison of scenes from the video in the false post (left) and in the video in The Guardian article (right):

Image

Screenshot comparison of scenes from the video in the false post (left) and in the video in the The Guardian article (right)

The Guardian's story says the video -- date-stamped April 16, 2013 -- shows a massacre in the Damascus suburb of Tadamon.

According to the report, the footage was discovered by a new recruit to a loyalist Syrian militia in 2019, when he was handed a laptop that once belonged to one of President Bashar al-Assad’s feared security units.

"A paralysing nausea took hold of the recruit, who instantly decided the footage needed to be seen elsewhere," the Guardian report says.

Image