Clip of man in fatigues showing off dangerous gun stunt predates Niger coup

“Here's a Niger soldier displaying his military prowess using black magic as Ecowas prepares to invade the sovereign nation (sic),” reads a post published on X (formerly known as Twitter) on August 19, 2023.

The post has been shared more than 500 times.

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Screenshot showing the false tweet, taken on September 7, 2023

The video shows a man picking up two rifles and a pistol before firing them in his mouth and then spitting out bullets.

The post attributes the stunt to Nigerien witchcraft.

The video was also shared on a different X account with more than 70,000 followers.

On July 26, 2023, the Presidential Guard in Niger staged a coup, ousting Mohamed Bazoum, the country’s democratically elected president. In the days that followed, thousands of coup supporters took to the streets to demonstrate, at times violently (archived here).

Bazoum is being detained by the military, whose leaders declared they now hold power in the unstable West African nation.

ECOWAS gave the troops who seized power a seven-day ultimatum to reinstate Bazoum or face the potential use of force.

The coup leaders defied the warning, and the deadline passed on August 6, 2023, with no action taken by ECOWAS.

Leaders of ECOWAS then met on August 10 and ordered the activation of a “standby force” for possible use against Niger’s coup leaders (archived here).

The bloc did not provide details on the force or the timeline for potential action against the coup leaders. As of September 8, the “standby force” had not been activated.

But the online clip is old and does not show a Nigerien soldier showcasing his combat skills.

Footage predates Niger coup

The clip has been online since at least 2019, predating the Niger coup.

Back in 2019, AFP Fact Check wrote an article investigating a longer version of the video that circulated at the time (archived here).

The man is wearing what appears to be one of the uniforms worn by South Sudanese military troops. On his chest, you can see an emblem featuring the country's black, red and green flag, and on his shoulder, the army’s green and yellow insignia.

A cross-check in the AFP photo archives found that South Sudan troops wear several different uniforms, including the one seen in the clip.

Some have the red and green flag on the chest, while others have it on the shoulder.

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A side-by-side comparison of the uniform worn by the man in the clip left, and that of the SPLA from AFP photo archives

“We can protect Kiir anywhere, man,” the uniformed man can be heard saying in the longer version of the clip.

Salva Kiir is the president of South Sudan.

AFP Fact Check is still trying to verify when and where this clip was originally filmed.

Extremely dangerous stunt

Experts told AFP that the man could not have fired real bullets without hurting himself.

Our reporters visited Antony Wahome, a Kenyan-based ballistics expert, in 2019 for a demonstration of a similar stunt at the National Gun Owners Association of Kenya in Kiambu County, though he did not shoot guns in his mouth.

Wahome said the video shows an extremely dangerous stunt, adding that the man used blank bullets.

“What basically he did was to separate the cartridge to get an empty case, then used the empty shell to pull the trigger. When you shoot the gun with this empty shell, you will only hear a sound and see some smoke, but there is nothing,” Wahome explained.

In this video, Wahome demonstrates the difference in the sound between a gun loaded with live bullets and one loaded with an empty cartridge shell. A loud bang is heard from a gun firing a live shot, while one from an empty shell is significantly quieter (archived here).

Hear the difference in the video below:

Arthur Alphin, a US-based ballistics expert, told AFP reporters in 2019 that live ammunition produces a recoil effect -- a backwards motion -- when the trigger is pulled, and this does not happen in the video , another sign that the man was firing blanks.

“They are NOT using live ammunition. There is zero effective muzzle blast, there is zero recoil, and there is zero function of the firearms,” he told AFP.

He expressed disgust at the clip, saying it could cause harm to people watching it on social media.

“What if some child saw this and tried it with live ammunition?” he said.