An old image of a Yemeni soldier about to shoot a person in the back of the head recently reshared in social media as “Public execution of a child molester in Yemen.”
Kashif verified the image and found it to be old and the claim to be inaccurate. The European Press Agency (EPA Images) published image of the same incident from different angles on 6 July 2009, stating that they show “A Yemeni soldier publicly executes Yemeni defendant Yahya Hussein al-Raghwah accused of raping and murdering an 11-year-old child in the capital Sana’a, Yemen. On 06 July 2009. A Yemeni court upheld the death sentence issued against al-Raghwah for raping and murdering child Hamdi al-Kabas in Sana’a in 2008 inside his shop.” The images were taken by EPA photographer Yahya Arhab.
—A photo of the same incident from another angle, published by the EPA Images website on 6 July 2009
Image description via EPA Images and date of publication
Fox News also quoted the Yemeni news agency Saba on 6 July 2009 that a barber was publicly executed after being convicted of raping and murdering an 11-year-old boy who came to his salon for a haircut. The barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a trial in January to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him, and cutting his body into pieces before dumping it outside Sana’a.
Kashif found that a number of news websites circulated the news of the execution and pictures of its implementation on July 6 and 7, 2009.
