October 05, 2018
The Judiciary in Shiraz has arrested three unnamed people after the city raised a billboard marking the anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq War showing three Israeli soldiers.
The billboard used a photoshopped picture showing the backs of three male soldiers standing on a rocky outcrop with bowed heads. The use of an Israeli photo was presumably a simple error by someone looking for a suitable photo on the Internet.
After it was put up in a square in central Shiraz, people noticed the men were wearing Israeli uniforms and carrying American-made M-16 rifles.
It also emerged that a long-haired female soldier standing to the right of the three men was cropped out of the original photo.
Pictures of the billboard were quickly posted on the Internet. One angry citizen tweeted, “I felt burned when I saw this billboard in the middle of Sacred Defense Week. M-16 guns, straps, clothes, caps on their shoulders [in the Israeli military style]; all of these belong to Zionists. In the best case scenario, I can say you did something idiotic.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Persian Twitter account also mocked the billboard, and noted that Iranians had posted images showing it being taken down overnight.
The head of the Shiraz City Council, Ahmad Dastgheyb, ordered cultural officials to carry out an urgent investigation, local media reported.
If it was confirmed a picture of soldiers of the “usurper Zionist regime” had been used, he said, it would be “necessary to deal seriously with those responsible.”
No one has named the trio arrested or what organization they worked for.