Footage of separatists arrested in Azerbaijan falsely shared as 'Israeli generals captured by Hamas'
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on October 21, 2023 at 10:34
- 4 min read
- By AFP Thailand
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"Breaking news: Several Israel top IDF (Israel Defense Forces) generals have been arrested by Hamas during clashes with Israel in Gaza," reads a Burmese-language Facebook post shared on October 8.
A video, which has more than 7,600 views, shows masked men in military uniform marked with the letters "DTX" leading away three men in handcuffs.
Israel has been carrying out air and artillery strikes on Gaza since Hamas gunmen unleashed a massive attack on communities in southern Israel on October 7 that Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people, mainly civilians.
The health ministry in Gaza says the Israeli strikes have killed 3,785 people in the besieged Palestinian enclave, also mostly civilians.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Hamas "for the immediate and unconditional release" of the hostages taken in the attack, which Israel says number 203.
He also urged Israel to allow "immediate, unrestricted access of humanitarian aid" after its siege and bombardment campaign led to an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis.
The video was shared in similar Facebook posts falsely linking it to the Israel-Hamas conflict, including in Burmese, Bengali and Spanish.
However, the men in the clip are not Israeli generals, but separatist leaders in the Nagorno-Karabakh region -- a breakaway region that Azerbaijan regained control of in September.
Separatist leaders
Reverse image searches on Google found a longer version of the video posted on October 5 by the official YouTube channel of the Azerbaijan State Security Service (archived here).
The security service is known as DTX -- the same letters displayed on the uniforms of the masked men in the clip.
The video in the false posts matches the part of the YouTube starting from the 2:27 mark.
The YouTube video was also embedded in a statement from the Azerbaijan State Security Service on the arrest of the men published on the same day (archived here).
The statement said they were accused of forming illegal armed groups and supplying them with weapons and ammunition.
Two of the men were identified as Arkadi Arshaviri Ghukasyan and Bako Sahaki Sahakyan -- both self-styled ex-presidents of the breakaway region. The third man was Davit Rubeni Ishkhanyan, a former speaker of the region's separatist legislature.
The men's arrests came after Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh in September after a lightning 24-hour military operation that ended three decades of separatist rule by ethnic Armenians (archived link).
Below are three screenshot comparisons between the footage shared in the false Facebook posts (left) and the YouTube video from the Azerbaijan State Security Service (right):
AFP has published photos of the arrest of two of the three men here, and here, where they are seen wearing the same clothes.
Azerbaijan's flag can also be seen on one of the DTX officer's uniform at the misleading video's 25-second mark, as seen in the screengrab below highlighted in red.
The Israeli army told AFP on October 17 there were no generals held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation on the Israeli-Hamas conflict.
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