Does photo show Shamima Begum beheading prisoner? Fact Check

ByCraig Haley

An image circulating online claims to show Shamima Begum, the woman who left the UK has a girl to join ISIS fighters in Syria, about to behead a man lying on the ground.

FALSE

An example of the photo as it appears on social media is below.

For all you snowflakes out there who want to let that poor innocent girl who wants to come home after running off to isis
I will just leave this here
This is the very same girl.

This photo tends to resurface whenever new about Begum is released in the news media. It circulated initially in 2019, and again in July 2020 when it was revealed that a court decision could potentially let Begum return to the UK to appeal her citizenship being revoked.

However, regardless of your feelings on Begum and any potential return to the UK, this photo doesn’t show her.

A reverse image search shows the photo was released as a video by ISIS in July 2015. While Begum would have likely been in Syria at that time (she left the UK in February 2015) the video released by ISIS did not name the child in video. Additionally, further stills available online of the video show that the child in the video is clearly not Begum (see below.)

While Begum did join ISIS after arriving in Syria, it has been reported that she joined the ISIS “morality police” unit and was responsible for recruiting new members. There are no confirmed or documented reports at the time of writing that she has directly killed anyone while in Syria.

As such, we rank the claim that this photo shows Shamima Begum about to behead a prisoner as false.

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