Old photo of Farkhunda Malikzada’s lynching shared as Taliban executing Afghan Airforce pilot Safiya Ferozi - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 20, 2021
A photo is being shared on social media claiming it as the visuals of the Taliban executing Safiya Firozi, one of the four lady pilots of the Afghanistan Air Force. This photo shows the picture of a brutally assaulted woman full of blood on her face. This post claims that Safiya Firozi was stoned to death in public. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of Taliban killing Afghan Airforce pilot, Safiya Firozi.
Fact: The woman in the photo is Farkhunda Malikzada, not the Afghan Airforce pilot Safiya Firozi. In 2015, Farkhunda Malikzada was beaten to death by a mob in Kabul, Afghanistan. They killed Farkhunda Malikzada on the false allegations that she had burnt Quran. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, similar photos were found on several websites. They can be seen here and here. These articles mentioned the brutally assaulted woman as Farkhunda Malikzada.
When we searched for more details using these keywords, we found that ‘The New York Times’ had published an article reporting the tragic death of Farkhunda Malikzada. This incident reportedly took place in 2015 at Kabul city in Afghanistan. According to this article, Farkhunda Malikzada was beaten to death by a mob in Kabul, Afghanistan. Malikzada was assaulted and killed on the false allegations that she burnt Quran. Reporting the complete details of this incident, several news websites have published articles. They can be read here, here, and here. It is nowhere reported that Farkhunda Malikzada was a pilot in Afghanistan Air Force.
Who is Safia Ferozi?
On searching for the details about Safia Ferozei, we found out that Safia Ferozi was indeed an Afghan Air Force female pilot. Several news websites in the past have published news articles about Safia Ferozi. They can be read here, here, and here.
It is nowhere reported that Safia Ferozi was recently executed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, a few news websites reported that the Taliban executed few Afghan Air Force pilots after they took complete control over Afghanistan.
To sum it up, an old photo related to Farkhunda Malikzada’s lynching is shared as visuals of the Taliban executing Afghan Airforce pilot Safiya Ferozi.