Claim: Live CCTV footage purportedly shows the Iran President’s helicopter crash.
Fact: The original video is from 2022 when a helicopter crashed in a jungle in Panama. It is unrelated to Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter crash.
On 24 May 2024, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a video with the caption, “Helicopter crash: Accident or conspiracy… A live video of the CCTV camera surfaced. A viral video on social media is purporting to be of the helicopter of Iran President Ibrahim Raisi.. in which it is claimed that the pilot could not control the helicopter and 9 people lost their lives in the accident.”
Ebrahim Raisi Death
The video was shared only days after Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, along with six other top officials, and flight crew died in a helicopter crash near the country’s Azerbaijan border on Sunday, 19 May 2024.
The wreckage was found early on Monday, 20 May, after an overnight search in poor weather conditions.
Fact or Fiction?
When Soch Fact Check conducted a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes, the results on Google led us to a YouTube video, uploaded on 17 August 2022, by an Australian news channel 9 News Australia. The video titled, “Dramatic footage emerges of helicopter nose-diving in Panama jungle” shows a news bulletin describing a helicopter crash in the South American country of Panama.
According to the description of the YouTube post, “Panama Presidential candidate Dimitri Florez and six others” had survived a crash in 2022, when their helicopter landed “in the deep jungle of Panama”. The same footage from the viral clip is featured in the news bulletin.
A Persian news outlet, Aparat, also shared the same video in a report on the crash in Panama, published in 2022. According to the title of the news report, when translated from Persian into English, the footage shows “The moment the helicopter of the President of Panama crashed”.
Daily Mail UK also reported on the crash in 2022, adding that the helicopter, which was carrying the Panama presidential candidate Dimitri Flores and five others, crashed between the cities of Bocas del Toro and Chiriquí in Panama. The crash had resulted in some of them sustaining fractures, but rescue teams were able to reach the crash site and bring all six passengers back to safety at the time, the article added.
Virality
On X, the video received 33,800 views, 361 likes and 200 reposts. It can be seen here.
It was also shared here on Instagram.
Conclusion: A video purportedly showing live CCTV footage of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s fatal crash is unrelated to the incident. The original video is from 2022 when a plane carrying six passengers crashed in Panama.
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Background image in cover photo: ABC News
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