Containers of Weapons Headed for Refugee Camps Seized in Greece-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Containers full of weapons headed for Syrian refugee camps in Europe were seized in Greece.
The Truth:
Greek officials didn’t intercept containers full of weapons that had been shipped to Syrian refugee camps in Europe.
That rumor started with a video posted on YouTube. The video shows customs officials in Greece unpacking containers full of weapons and ammunitions at a port. A caption reads, “Container with aid for ‘refugees’ was full of weapons and ammunition,” and a narrator speaks in Greek over the top of it:
[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-UCR5p0y0[/embedyt]
The video does show Greek customs officials unpacking illegal weapons that they’d intercepted — but those weapons were shipped from Turkey to Libya, not from Turkey to refugee camps in Europe, Reuters reports:
A coast guard patrol boat raided the vessel on Tuesday, 20 nautical miles northeast of Crete. The freighter, with a crew of seven and which had sailed from the Turkish port of Iskenderun, was escorted to Heraklion port on the island.
The United Nations has imposed an embargo on weapons shipments to Libya, which is plagued by factional conflict.
“The ship’s crew is being questioned and the content of its containers will be checked,” a coast guard official said, declining to be named.
The coast guard provided no further details of what kind of arms the freighter had on board, or its ownership.
A Turkish foreign ministry spokesman confirmed the cargo included weapons but said it was fully documented and was destined for the Sudanese police force. The vessel was also carrying building materials for Libya, he said.
A video of the raid was simply mislabeled to make it appear that the containers of weapons were headed to refugee camps in Europe. The hoax worked, too. A week after the video was posted, it had nearly 800,000 views, and some viewers commented that the Syrian refugees were part of a master plan to launch sudden jihadist attacks from inside Europe.