Photo is Not Ilhan Omar

Suzy Woltmann

Politics

22nd July 2020

Omar was born several years after the photo was taken (AP Images).

The Claim

A photo depicts congresswoman Ilhan Omar at an Al Qaida training camp in Somalia.

News posted on

Emerging story

The picture was shared as early as August 2019, including by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who has since removed the post), but recirculated on social media in summer 2020. Posts sharing the photo included anti-Muslim hate speech and vitriolic language directed towards Omar.

Misbar’s Analysis

Misbar’s investigation found that the image is not of Representative Omar, who was one of the first two Muslim women in U.S. Congress. A reverse image search leads to the Associated Press Images collection, where we discovered it was taken on February 25, 1978 – over three years before Omar was born.

The AP description of the image says: “A woman recruit of the Somali Army checks her automatic weapon at a military training campus at Halane, Mogadishu, on Feb. 25, 1978. On the right is her instructor. President Siad Barre said at a news conference that regular Somali military units have not yet been dispatched in the Ogaden region to avoid international complications.”

Omar was born in 1981. Her family fled Somalia during the Somali Civil War and spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before immigrating to the U.S. in 1995.

Omar addressed the photo, calling it “pure propaganda designed to stir up hate and violence” and people who believe it “gullible.”