A video clip showing an elderly man and a young girl in an agricultural field is being shared on social media (here, here, and here) claiming that the visuals show an 86-year-old man named Muhammad Moin al-Din sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals show an 86-year-old man, Muhammad Moin Al-Din sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl in an agricultural field.
Fact: The viral video is a clip from an Iranian TV show named “Zehra’s Eyes” (originally “Zahra’s Blue Eyes”). In this part of the show, Zehra and her grandfather, Rahman, are shown escaping from Israeli officers who are trying to capture Zehra to harvest her eyes. They rest briefly in a field at night and continue running from the authorities in the morning. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
In the comment section of the viral post, we observed users pointing out (here and here) that this is not an actual incident but a video clip from a movie titled “Zahra’s Blue Eyes.”
Taking this as a cue, we performed a relevant keyword search and found a longer version of the same video on the Network Movie YouTube channel with the title “Zəhranın mavi gözləri” Filmi (Zahra’s Blue Eyes) dated 22 May 2022. The viral clip can be seen around the 02:32:45 timestamp in this video.
The video description states that “Zehra’s Eyes” (originally “Zahra’s Blue Eyes”) is a 2004 Iranian TV series. The plot follows Isaac Owen, an Israeli commander, whose child is blind. To restore his child’s sight, Owen plans to take the eyes of a Palestinian child. He sends a medical team to a school in a Palestinian refugee camp under the pretence of conducting eye exams, but their real goal is to find a donor. The doctors are impressed by Zehra’s eyes, and Owen schemes to deceive Zehra and her family to take her eyes for his child. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) website also mentions a television series called Zahra’s Blue Eyes.
In this part of the show, Zehra and her grandfather, Rahman, are shown escaping from Israeli officers who are trying to capture Zehra to harvest her eyes. They rest briefly in a field at night and continue running from the authorities in the morning. Below, is the comparison between the viral video and the movie clip.
To sum up, a scene from an Iranian TV show is shared as an old man sexually assaulting a young girl.
