Always the same scenario: a celebrity is invited for a charity to visit a family recently released from the yoke of the Islamic State (IS) group.

Except that once in the house, jihadists attack.

Or rather actors disguised as jihadists pretend to attack.

But the star "trapped" does not know, not immediately.

The player of the national football team Alaa Mahaoui thus found himself kneeling, blindfolded, begging to save his life.

Before fake Iraqi fighters arrive at the right time and save everyone.

This program, one of the many hidden cameras that flourish on Arab channels during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, is supposed to entertain but causes a scandal in Iraq.

A production signed by a coalition of paramilitaries

Indeed, if the jihadists are actors, the last prayers of the trapped celebrities are very real. And it is impossible for them, once the masquerade has been revealed, to get excited about the production: it is signed by Hachd al-Chaabi, a powerful coalition of paramilitaries who play their own role in the show, weapons in hand. At the end of his episode, Alaa Mahaoui was also entitled to a lesson from the presenter: "you fly the Iraqi flag on the football fields, but the Hachd, the army and the police, they do it in sacrificing their martyrs ”.

Nessma, an actress in her fifties, did not protest either as she appeared unconscious for several minutes, lying on the ground with a fake belt of explosives that she believed loaded around her stomach.

She only woke up when the host poured a water bottle on her face.

“This is not entertainment,” protests on Twitter Bilal al-Mosuli, a resident of Mosul.

Outrage on social media

"Next year, we could have a hidden camera on Saddam Hussein, where we could throw the guests in a river like the victims of Speicher", writes for his part on Facebook Ahmed Abderradi, in reference to the 1,700 Shiite military recruits executed by ISIS in 2014 before being thrown into the Tigris.

For years, trapping stars has become a staple of Ramadan programs on Arab satellite channels.

However, this is the first time that an Iraqi production has tried it with the very sensitive subject of terrorism.

"I do not see what pleasure a spectator can have in watching people being tortured in this way", wonders another Net surfer, the program multiplying the mock executions and the shootings - "with blank bullets" specifies an insert at the beginning.

From the fight against to advertising for the Islamic State

For many other Internet users, however, this program is an opportunity to greet the anti-IS fighters, including those of the Hachd, now integrated into the regular forces. "But it is possible to show the bravery of Hachd and Iraqi troops without playing on the rope of terror," adds Noor Ghazi, an Iraqi woman exiled in the United States. Because the terror, beyond the staging, is real: the home of the false displaced family is located in the agricultural belt of Baghdad where IS sleeper cells continue to intimidate and extort extortion from the inhabitants.

Worse, says Hamed al-Daamy, an Internet user, "this program advertises free for ISIS and other terrorist groups in Iraq, without any security vision in its preparation or in its presentation."

And with actors who pick up on IS slogans and its rhetoric at the top of their voices.

Faced with criticism, Dargham Abou Rghif, scriptwriter of the program, replied on several Facebook accounts: "the scenes are hard but if the IS had won, the artists would have an even more complicated life, and all Iraqis too".

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