Old Video of Saudi Imam Being Arrested Viral With False Israel-Hamas Narrative

This is an old video from 2018 and is not related to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.

Fact-check: An old video of a Saudi Imam getting arrested is being falsely linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing the supposed arrest of an Imam by the Saudi Arabian police from the pulpit of a mosque is going viral on the internet to claim that this happened recently after he spoke against Israel.

The video is going viral where users are adding the narrative of the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

What's the truth?: This video dates back to 2018 and is from Yanbu al-Bahr, Saudi Arabia.

• According to the reports, security guards escorted a person with intellectual disabilities out who attempted to deliver a Friday sermon in a mosque.

How did we find out the truth?: While performing a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video, and came across old reports from 2018.

• An Arabic news portal, Akhbaar24, shared a report on 2 March 2018 and carried this same viral video.

• The report stated that this video is from the Jabriya Mosque, Yanbu in Saudi Arabia.

• It also carried a quote of the official spokesperson of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Call and Guidance in the Medina region, Majid Al-Muhammadi, who stated that this video shows a "mentally unstable" person being escorted out by the security personnel.

The article can be seen here.

(Source: Akbhaar 24/Screenshot)

• The same information about the viral video was also carried by other Arabic news portals namely Al Khaleej Online, Al Yaum, Al Riyadh and Al Quds.

• We also found an old post on Facebook shared by Global Village Space, a Pakistani media outlet which carried the same video but the caption carried a different explanation.

• The post was shared on 3 March 2018, and the caption stated that a Saudi Imam was interrupted by the security when he started to 'criticise the new policies of the crown prince'.

The post can be seen here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Conclusion: Although we couldn't independently verify the context of the video, it is clear that an old video of a Saudi Imam getting arrested is being falsely linked to the Israel-Hamas war.

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