Video shows crime scene reconstruction in Tehran, not 'Iran parading Israeli spies'
- Published on August 11, 2025 at 04:58
- 4 min read
- By Charlotte KWAN, AFP Hong Kong
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The video, comprising two short clips appearing to show people in prison garb escorted down a street and someone being hanged, was shared on Weibo on July 2, 2025 by Chinese newspaper Reference News.
Simplified-Chinese text superimposed on the video reads: "Iran executes Mossad spies. Before the execution, they were paraded on the streets in handcuffs and shackles."
It has been viewed over 152,000 times.
The clip's caption adds that the video was originally shared by Iranian news anchor Sahar Emami on July 1 -- though an archive of the post shows it was in fact published by a "commentary account" impersonating the TV presenter (archived link). The impostor account has since been suspended.
Similar posts were also shared in multiple languages on Threads, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram.
They surfaced after Iran and Israel exchanged fire in June, which left more than 1,000 people dead in Iran and 29 in Israel (archived link). A ceasefire announced by the United States has been in place since June 24.
Activists warned that Iranian authorities had unleashed a "wave of repression" following the war, accusing the Islamic republic of using fear to compensate for weaknesses revealed by the conflict (archived link).
The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights said six men had been hanged on charges of spying for Israel since the start of the conflict on June 13.
The video circulating online, however, does not show "spies" paraded through Iran.
Crime scene reconstruction
A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the first falsely shared clip led to the same footage posted on Instagram on March 27 (archived link).
Its Persian-language caption indicates it was filmed where a university student was murdered in Tehran .
Subsequent keyword searches led to a similar video published by the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA) with a title saying it shows a crime scene reconstruction with the suspect (archived link).
AFP reported that the murder of Amir Mohammad Khaleghi, a 19-year-old business student at Tehran University, sparked outrage and student protests for better security on campus (archived link).
According to local media reports, Khaleghi was killed by robbers near the university's dormitory on February 12.
News website Iran Front Page reported on February 20 that police reconstructed the crime scene with the murder suspects in the presence of court and law enforcement officials and forensics experts (archived link).
"The reconstruction aims to provide a clearer understanding of the events and assist in completing the investigation," the report said.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency also reported on the reconstruction (archived link).
The false clip was earlier debunked by the Arab fact-checking platform Misbar (archived link).
Backstage footage
The second falsely shared clip has also previously been debunked by AFP.
A reverse image search led to longer footage published on YouTube on April 16, 2024, titled "Hanging the actor backstage" (archived link).
The full clip shows the actor raising his head after the scene.
Another version of the clip was shared on Instagram on January 3, 2025 with the caption, "Behind the scenes of the execution of the Bi Badan film" (archived link).
The entertainment database IMDb says the 2024 Farsi-language film is an adaptation of a famous criminal case in the 1990s "which went back and forth several times until the execution stage" (archived link).
The execution scene can be seen from a different angle between the movie's four to five-minute marks, an AFP journalist found.
The Iran-Israel war triggered a wave of misinformation, some of which AFP has debunked here.
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