Claim: A clip shows traffic caused by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur’s convoy travelling to Islamabad to participate in a PTI rally in October 2024.
Fact: The video has no connection to the PTI or its October 2024 gathering in Islamabad. It actually shows a traffic jam on a major Los Angeles thoroughfare in November 2017.
On 4 October 2024, Facebook page ‘Ali Amin Khan Gandapur PTI Tigers’ posted (archive) a video showing a traffic jam on a highway at night. The clip, which has been played close to 1,000 times, is captioned as follows:
“*عوامی وزیر علی امین کا قافلہ 15 کلومیٹر تک پھیلا ہوا ہے 🔥🔥🥵* *خیبرپختونخوا کا قافلہ اسلام آباد میں داخل* *روک سکتے ہو تو روک لو..✌️*
[*The convoy of the public’s [chosen] minister Ali Amin is spread up to 15 kilometre 🔥🔥🥵* *Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s convoy enters Islamabad* *Try stopping it if you can..✌️*]”
Ali Amin Gandapur, a prominent leader of the incarcerated former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, is currently the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). He is known for making incendiary speeches, tall claims, and demands that resonate with his supporters but also landed him in hot water. However, Khan has defended him.
Ahead of a PTI gathering in Islamabad’s D-Chowk this month, an area that hosted many major protests, Gandapur led a convoy of party supporters to participate in the event.
While the politician was seen leading the crowd and was spotted at various points in the city, he abruptly disappeared from the scene. The PTI once again claimed that he was “kidnapped”, “missing” or “abducted”, marking the second time the party made such allegations; however, he reappeared later both times and the PTI had to backtrack its claims of his arrest and abduction.
During the hours he was reportedly “missing”, Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi denied the claims of his abduction. When Gandapur reappeared this time, he said he was in the KP House “the whole time”.
A tense Islamabad
Authorities imposed Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) — which bars political gatherings, rallies, and sit-ins over security concerns — from 3 to 8 October 2024 while Internet and mobile services were suspended alongside a blockade of exit and entry points to Islamabad.
Clashes eventually erupted between the PTI and law enforcement agencies. According to one report, at least one police officer was killed during the confrontations while hundreds of others were injured, “including more than 100 police officers”.
Related: Video of people heading to PTI’s 8 September rally in Islamabad is unrelated
At present, Islamabad is sensitive amid preparations for the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, slated to be held on 15 and 16 October 2024, and the government has announced the three days of public holidays in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Naqvi, the interior minister, has called in “additional personnel from Pakistan Army, Rangers, FC, and Punjab Police” for foolproof security, which is significant especially due to the expected participation of the foreign minister of India, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, marking the “first visit by a high ranking Indian minister to Pakistan in nearly a decade”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched keyframes of the viral video and found it to be not only old but entirely unrelated to Pakistan.
We came across an X post from 23 November 2017 about roads and traffic that included a screenshot of a video uploaded by ABC News the day before, showing “aerial footage shows bumper-to-bumper traffic in Los Angeles” ahead of Thanksgiving that year.
Aerial footage shows bumper-to-bumper traffic in Los Angeles as Americans get a head start on Thanksgiving travel. https://t.co/GAHCy45ous pic.twitter.com/lt7ClP8qb0
— ABC News (@ABC) November 22, 2017
The road seen in the clip is, in fact, the Interstate 405, a major highway in Southern California. The traffic jam from 2017 was reported on by DailyMail’s website, MailOnline, and CBS Minnesota.
Interestingly, the traffic jam has become a common annual occurrence, with ABC News posting visuals from the Interstate 405 every year since 2016 here, here, here, here, and here.
This is also not the first time that the viral video has been linked to the PTI. In 2022, it was falsely associated with the party’s “Haqeeqi Azadi March” and was swiftly debunked by Soch Fact Check.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the video was posted on Gandapur’s Facebook and TikTok accounts, where it was viewed 74,000 and 615,000 times, respectively.
It was also posted as a Facebook reel.
On X (erstwhile Twitter), we found the clip shared here, here, and here.
Conclusion: The video does not show Gandapur’s convoy nor is it related to the PTI’s October 2024 rally in Islamabad. It actually shows a traffic jam on a major Los Angeles thoroughfare in November 2017 ahead of Thanksgiving that year.
Background image in cover photo: AliAminKhanGandapurPti
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