Fact Check: The Virgin Mary Statue Destruction Video is from 2013, Not Recent

The Claim: Social media accounts shared on Friday, December 20, 2019, a video showing a person destroying the Virgin Mary statue, claiming that it was recent and that the person was a fighter from the Syrian armed opposition. Several accounts contributed to the spread of this claim, and a sample of these accounts can be found in the "Sources of the Claim" section at the end of this article.

The "Verify-sy" platform team conducted a search to verify the authenticity of the video that claimed to be recent and documented a fighter from the Syrian armed opposition smashing the Virgin Mary statue, and it turned out to be false.

Reverse research using the InVid tool revealed that the video in the claim is not recent, but rather old, and has been online since October 2013. This debunks the claim that the video documented a recent incident after the fall of the Assad regime or in the days leading up to its collapse.

The video had been posted by public pages on social media, with claims that the incident occurred in the village of Al-Yaqoubiya in Idlib in October 2013. Further reverse analysis of the incident showed that the Syrian National Coalition issued a condemnation statement on October 29, 2013, on its official website regarding the attack.

The National Coalition at that time quoted an "expert on Islamic movements," who identified the person in the video as Omar Ghrabah, a commander of a battalion from ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

1. الادعاء بأن المقطع المتداول حديث ويوثق تدمير مقاتل المعارضة السورية لتمثال السيدة العذراء غير صحيح.
2. المقطع في الادعاء قديم ومنشور على الإنترنت منذ 2013.
3. الشخص في المقطع ينتمي إلى تنظيم "داعش" وليس المعارضة السورية المسلحة.
4. أدرجت المادة في قسم "تضليل" وفق "منهجية تأكد".