Falsehoods spread following fall of Assad’s Syrian regime
Soofia Tariq and Kate Atkinson
December 9, 2024
WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Photo shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad alive in Moscow after fleeing Damascus.
OUR VERDICT
False. The images are from February 2023.
AAP FACTCHECK – Misinformation has been rampant across social media since the fall of the Syrian government and ousting of President Bashar al-Assad.
After a 13-year civil war, rebels seized control of Damascus on December 8. Assad fled the country and has reportedly been granted asylum by the Kremlin according to Russian state media.
Among the false claims circulating include supposed images of Assad safe and well on the streets of Moscow.
“#Assad in #Moscow photo confirms the ex #president has asylum in #Russia. He is safe and well,” one post reads, with a photo of the deposed president and his wife.
However, the image used in the posts is not current.
A reverse image search of the photo shows it dates back to February 2023 when al-Assad was visiting a hospital in Aleppo after an earthquake.
Other social media posts falsely claim to show the ousted president’s plane on fire after unconfirmed reports he had died in a plane crash.
The posts appeared after social media users posted the plane al-Assad was allegedly on had disappeared from flight trackers.
“Bashar al-Assad’s plane lost 6700 meters in seconds, video shows plane fragment engulfed in huge fire”, one Facebook post claims along with a photo of a plane on fire.
A reverse image search of the photo shows it’s from September 2024 and depicts an Indian Air Force jet on fire in Rajasthan.
The placement and shape of the flames match, as well as the shape of the plane.
Social media users have also claimed images show a prisoner being freed from Syria’s infamous Saydnaya prison.
While many real videos do show Syrians escaping the prison, one viral image claiming to show a man being freed from an underground cell is false.
“There are more and more pictures emerging from rescue operations in the Sednayah prison. That facility has deep underground dungeons, which are hard to reach. People are literally buried underneath it,” one Facebook post reads above the photo.
“The disbelief in the faces of the liberated people is obvious,” it says.
However, a reverse image search shows this particular image is not real, but rather from what appears to be a TikTok video generated using artificial intelligence technology.
Australian-based commentator Maram Susli (also known as Syrian Girl or Partisan Girl) has also claimed that a video of Syrian rebels shows them wiping their feet on the Palestinian flag.
“Syrian “revolution” wiping their feet with the Palestinian flag,” the tweet reads, along with a video of a man speaking in Arabic and stepping on a flag and a photo of Assad.
However, a translation of the video confirms this is incorrect and the flag is of Assad’s Ba’ath Party.
The Ba’ath Party flag looks very similar to the Palestinian flag but has slight distinctions including different proportions.
An AAP journalist fluent in Arabic translated the man in the video as saying: “A small disclaimer from Maarat al Numan (Syrian town): this isn’t the flag of Palestine, this is the flag of the Ba’ath party”.
“Greetings to our brothers in Gaza and Palestine, there are a lot of videos published saying that we’re stepping on the Palestinian flag – that’s impossible!”
“You are in our hearts and your cause is our cause, one cause, but this is the flag of the Ba’ath party which claimed to be the resistance. And this is the photo of the son of the donkey.” (AAP)
