An old video falsely being shared as footage from a car accident in which cartoonist Lars Vilks was killed

Controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks was killed in a car crash on October 4, 2021, after two murder attempts by fanatics following his drawing of the Prophet Mohammed with a dog. Shortly after the death of the provocateur artist at Sweden, a video is circulating on social media platforms claiming it is from the same accident. The video claims to show how Lars Vilks was burned in a traffic accident. The 30 second distressing video clip shows a burning car where a man can be heard screaming out loud with pain.

The caption of the post mentions that “The anti-Islamic Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who drew cartoons insulting Hadrath Muhammad (Sallahu Alayhi wa Sallam), was burned to death in a traffic accident.”

(Warning: Distressing Content)

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This video was also shared on YouTube with the same claim.

Fact Check-

We started our investigation by breaking the video into small keyframes with the help of InVid We Verify tool and ran a Yandex reverse image search on it. The results led us to a longer version of the viral video which was posted on YouTube in October 2014. The caption in Russian translates to “Road accident: Izhevsk – Mozhga.” The description of the video mentions that the accident took place on 21^st September 2014.

Next, we ran a keyword search to locate Izhevsk-Mozhga. We found that Mozhga is a town in Udmurt Republic in Russia and Izhevsk is the capital of the Republic. Further, we ran a relevant keyword search on Google which led us to a report published by a Russian website Fotanka on September 2014. The report stated that a terrible accident took place in Udmurtia on 21 September where 9 cars collided each other at the Izhevsk-Mozhga highway. The driver was burnt alive in this tragic accident.

This incident was also reported by several other Russian media in 2014 such as Izhevsk news Life and Komsomolskaya Pravda. The reports mentioned that the police lodged a criminal case on the accident. They have identified the deceased who was the driver as a 39-year-old resident of Izhevsk.

Conclusion-

Fact Crescendo found that the claims made along with the viral video are Partly False. The viral video on social media does not show Lars Vilks tragic car accident. Even though the incident of Vilks car crash is true, but the video is not related to the incident. The video dates back to September 2014 when 9 cars had collided on a highway in Russia.