Fact Check: Viral video claiming dance by Amini's father at her funeral is FALSE
Thousands of activists held anti-government protests in Iraq’s capital city of Baghdad. Iraq’s security forces fired teargas and stun grenades to disperse large crowd of protestors indulging in stone pelting.
A large number of protests erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was killed in the custody of Iran's morality police over hijab rules. She was buried in her hometown Saqqez in Kurdistan Province.
Thousands of activists held anti-government protests in Iraq's capital city of Baghdad. Iraq's security forces fired teargas and stun grenades to disperse large crowd of protestors indulging in stone pelting.
Amidst this, a video of a man dancing in front of a coffin went viral with a caption "Saddest thing I have ever seen in my life: a father who promised his daughter he will dance at her wedding now dancing at her grave after she was killed by the Iranian regime in the protests against execution of people for forced hijab."
The claim is viral on several social media platforms including WhatsApp.
Fact check:
The claim that the video shows Mahsa Amini's father dancing in front of his daughter's funeral is FALSE. The video shows a clip from the Azerbaijani TV series.
When we performed Google reverse image search using keyframes extracted from the video, we found a video posted on Facebook with the caption in Turkish language. The translation states that it is the story of a man who danced at his daughter's funeral.
We also found a tweet by a journalist named Cavid Aga who tweeted that the video is from a TV drama Ata Ocagi which was telecast 4 years ago. The man in the video is an actor and his name is Gurban Ismayilov.
His tweet goes as: This man is an actor I personally know. His name is Gurban Ismayilov and this scene is from a famous TV drama Ata Ocagi aired 4 years ago.
When we searched for the TV series Ata Ocagi, we found series of videos featuring the man in the viral video. The videos of the serial are posted by the YouTube channel named Xezer Film.
When we searched the YouTube channel Xezer Film, we found the episode of the series which has the sequence seen in the viral video. The viral dance sequence can be seen from 18.40 minutes to 20.07 minutes. This video was posted on January 9, 2018.
When searched for Gurban Ismayilov, we found several images showing the same person in the video. A website named apa.az, also published a photo blog with the title 'People's artist of Republic of Azerbaijan Gurban Ismayilov'
Hence, the video with the claim that Amini's father danced in front of his daughter's funeral is FALSE. The video clip is from Azerbaijani TV series.