Fact check: Video shows Taliban fighter attached to helicopter, not public hanging
The claim: A video shows the Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter
In a video and screenshots seen by millions of people in just over a day, a helicopter is seen trailing a rope with a blurry figure attached.
The full 12-second clip shows a helicopter in Afghanistan hovering over buildings. Then, the video zooms in to show what appears to be a person hanging from the helicopter by a rope.
"Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar," Old Holborn, a "comedian" and "stoic libertarian legend," tweeted Aug. 30.
The clip, originally tweeted by a counterterrorism expert who said he wasn't sure what it depicted, racked up more than 2.6 million views in just over a one day. From there, the claim that the Taliban used a U.S.-supplied helicopter to hang someone spread across social media.
Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Dan Crenshaw, both Republicans from Texas, shared Old Holborn's clip on Twitter. Several news outlets, including the New York Post and India Today, wrote about the video, taking the hanging description at face value. Conservative commentators like Pamela Geller and Wayne Dupree shared the claim to their hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook.
But that never happened.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/31/fact-check-video-doesnt-show-taliban-hanging-someone-us-helicopter/5668864001/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
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