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Was a female Afghan fighter pilot stoned to death in public?

By Alexis Tereszcuk
NO

Afghan fighter pilot Safia Ferozi gave an interview to Stars and Stripes, published on Dec. 20, 2021, confirming she is alive. Social media posts from earlier in 2021 claimed Ferozi was stoned to death in public as the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

Ferozi told the publication that she left Afghanistan as the Taliban took over and eventually moved to the U.S.

An image from an Aug. 19, 2021, Facebook post claiming Ferozi had been killed included an actual photo of the pilot in uniform. However, a graphic image that accompanied many other social media posts purporting to be of Ferozi were not of the pilot but of another woman who was killed in Afghanistan in 2015 after she was accused of burning a Quran.

Ferozi told Stars and Stripes she believed she could have been killed had she remained in Afghanistan.

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Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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