Claim: A video shows a large group of PTI protesters outside Avenfield House following the arrest of Imran Khan.
Fact: The video is old and has nothing to do with Khan’s arrest.
On 10 May 2023, Twitter user Faisal Khan, with the handle @KaliwalYam, posted a video (archive) allegedly showing a large group of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) protesters that he claimed was gathered outside Avenfield House in London following the arrest a day earlier (archive) of former prime minister and PTI chief, Imran Khan.
The tweet by @KaliwalYam, which was posted at 11:44 PM, a few hours after Khan’s arrest in Islamabad, included the hashtag “#نکلو_خان_کی_زندگی_بچاؤ” — which translates to “Get out and save Imran Khan’s life” — and was captioned as follows:
“Avenfield London right now.
This was part of London plan to arrest #ImranKhan.
Release Imran Khan and save Pakistan.”
Faisal Khan, or @KaliwalYam (archive), is part of the PTI social media influencers’ group called Team Insafians Power (archive).
The family of Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) supremo, owns four flats in the Avenfield House, a residential apartment block on London’s Park Lane. The properties were also the centre point of a corruption case (archive) that led to Sharif’s ouster back in 2017.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check found through reverse image search tools that the video is not recent. The clip is, in fact, from 2022 and not related to the arrest of Imran Khan.
We came across a video posted here (archive) on 1 November 2022 by Kamran Khan, a Pakistani journalist and president of the Dunya Media Group, which runs Dunya News.
Interestingly, we also found out that Faisal Khan — the Twitter user behind the handle @KaliwalYam who posted the video we are investigating on 9 May 2023 — had also posted it back on 1 November 2022 (archive) but with a different caption:
“Scenes from outside Nawaz Sharif’s Avenfield residence.
Khan has 3 powers right now:
1) Youth
2) Overseas
3) Social Media
And nobody can buy or beat them on earth”
At that time, @KaliwalYam used the hashtag “#حقیقی_آزادی_لانگ_مارچ,” or the Haqeeqi Azadi March, a rally the PTI held in Pakistan’s Punjab province in November 2022.
We then used the search term “protest outside nawaz avenfield” on Google and found this story by Express Tribune, which has images originally tweeted by Twitter user @mohsinhaleem_ here (archive).
The tweet by @mohsinhaleem_ — which was posted on 17 April 2022, a week after Khan’s ouster from office through a parliamentary no-confidence vote — was captioned as follows:
“Protest in London, Outside of Nawaz Sharif’s Flat”
The comparison visual below highlights some markers that show similarities in both and confirm the video is from the same date and location.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that multiple accounts passed off the video with the claim it showed people gathering in a demonstration outside Avenfield House against the arrest of Imran Khan; some of these can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.
ARY News anchorperson Sabir Shakir posted the video (archive) on his Twitter account. It was also shared here, here, and here on Facebook, here on YouTube, and Anandabazar Patrika, a Bengali-language Indian newspaper, here (archive).
PTI leader Malak Shafi Ullah Khan — a former lawmaker in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Assembly and ex-special assistant to the provincial chief minister on prisons — also posted the video on his verified Facebook page here (archive).
Conclusion: The video is from April 2022 and has nothing to do with Khan’s arrest.
Background image in cover photo: Wikimedia via Mike Smith
