Claim: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) leader Asad Umar was arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on 20 August 2023 from Islamabad. Fact: Umar has refuted reports of his arrest by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The politician’s son also confirmed to Soch Fact Check that the former minister was in Karachi at the time. Umar […]
Claim: Salman Ahmad, a close aide of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan, posted a photo of a secret document claiming another cypher was leaked. Fact: The cypher was posted by a parody account of the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), or DG ISPR, in July 2023. Its informal language, spelling errors and lack […]
Claim: Photos show former US president Donald Trump being arrested in New York. Fact: The photos doing the rounds on social media are not real. It was generated by Bellingcat’s founder Eliot Higgins using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) art tool Midjourney. Fact or Fiction? On 21 March 2023, Twitter user @yoncecapital posted a photo claiming […]
Claim: Shireen Mazari says the government of Pakistan has bowed to their US counterparts by allowing the Americans to use the country’s airspace for military purposes despite the proposal being rejected by the cabinet. Fact: The claim is false. No such development has taken place. Moreover, the visuals used by Mazari are not only old […]
Claim: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has taken a U-turn from his claim that the United States is to blame for his ouster. Fact: Imran Khan did say that for him, this narrative is ‘over’ and ‘behind him’ but he did not back off from his allegations that Washington conspired to remove him from […]
Claim: PML-N MNA Ahsan Iqbal said that American president Joe Biden’s recent remarks questioning the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear program are because, like a father, he wants what is best for Pakistan. Fact: Ahsan Iqbal did not make this comment, a Geo News Urdu parody account on Twitter did. On 15 October 2022, a journalist […]
Claim: Bashar Noorzai was released in a prisoner exchange from Guantanamo Bay. Fact: Bashar Noorzai was charged with drug trafficking in New York, after which he remained in federal custody in the United States. Fact or Fiction? Believed to be a close aide to Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar and a key financer of the […]
Claim: A video shared on social media shows people crying in the aftermath of an earthquake that struck Afghanistan in June 2022. Fact: The video was shared by multiple media outlets in 2021 and shows the Taliban celebrating after the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan. On 23 June 2022, a video was shared […]
Claim: The Government of Pakistan under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will soon allow the United States to use its airspace to carry out military operations in Afghanistan, according to a CNN report. Fact: The CNN article cited in viral claims is actually from October 2021. At that time, Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to […]
Claim: A tweet attributed to American security analyst Rebecca L Grant states that America intervened in Pakistan’s internal politics “for remaining neutral” in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. The tweet also claims that Grant has proof to back up her claims and that Pakistani journalists are not telling the truth about the regime change in Pakistan. Fact: […]
Claim: An image is being shared on social media with the claim that it shows an anti-US protest staged in Russia in support of ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan. Fact: The image is doctored. The photo is in fact of a 2021 protest in the Russian capital Moscow against the detention of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. […]
Claim: A photograph shows the oldest tree in the world, a 6,000 year old giant tree in Tanzania. Fact: To date, no tree in the world has been verified to be 6,000 or more years old. The oldest living non-clonal tree on record is a more than 4,800-year-old bristlecone pine called ‘Methuselah’ in the Inyo […]