A video of the gruesome beheading of a young man in Ethiopia has sparked public outrage. Authorities accuse Fano rebels from the northern Amhara region of carrying out the killing. A post shared on Facebook after the killing claims that Fano militants have been captured by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), another rebel group active in the country’s Oromia region. However, this is incorrect: the images, which AFP Fact Check previously debunked, show Ethiopian soldiers detained by OLA troops in April 2024.
“OLA has captured Fano fighters,” claims the post published on Facebook in Afaan Oromoo on November 22, 2024.
Screenshot of the fake message, taken on November 28, 2024
The post was shared more than 290 times and contains more than a minute of footage of soldiers in Ethiopian army uniforms walking in single file. An armed man with dreadlocks can be seen guarding the men.
The OLA, a rebel force (archived here) operating in the Oromia region, took up arms in 2018 after accusing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of a lack of commitment to a genuine democratic transition in the early days of his leadership.
Meanwhile, the Fano militia group in Amhara was a former ally of Abiy’s government during the two-year Tigray war that ended in November 2022. However, the rebels turned against the government in July 2023 following the government’s decision to expel all regional to disarm troops. archived here).
Horrible video
In November 2024, a disturbing video surfaced online allegedly showing the beheading of a young man by armed men in the Northern Shoa Zone in the Dera District of the Oromia Region (archived here).
Dera, a border town between the Oromia and Amhara regions, has become the scene of armed conflict between the government and OLA and Fano rebels. According to the report, 43 civilians have been killed at the border in recent months.
The Ethiopian government accused Fano of being behind the killing, something the rebels denied (archived here). The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), an organization that renounced its armed struggle in 2018, also attributed the beheading to Fano militants (archived here).
In the aftermath of the gruesome death, students from several universities protested against the continued killings of civilians.
However, the footage does not show any Fano fighters captured by OLA forces.
Old video
AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to perform reverse image searches on key frames from the video.
The results showed that the footage was first shared on Facebook on April 4, 2024 (archived here).
The video was originally subtitled in Afaan Oromoo and read: “Captured soldiers of the Ethiopian government.”
In May 2024, AFP Fact Check debunked a report claiming the same clip showed government soldiers captured by Fano rebels.
However, our investigation revealed that the images showed government troops captured by OLA fighters a month earlier.
Oromia National Media (ONM), an online news outlet affiliated with the OLA, reported at the time that the rebels had launched an attack on the army in the southwestern Shoa zone in Oromia, killing and capturing scores of government troops.
AFP Fact Check compared the original clip with the version published after the recent beheading.
Once again, in both videos we paired an OLA fighter with dreadlocks – a typical hairstyle for the group’s fighters.
Screenshot of the original images from April 2024 (left) and the images in the fake post, taken on December 2, 2024
In addition, the man is seen carrying a sign designating OLA fighters: a red and green piece of fabric – the colors of the OLA flag – over his camouflage print uniform.
AFP Fact Check has previously debunked claims regarding the Ethiopian conflict here, here and here.
