Twitter Post Doctored and Attributed To Al Jazeera
The Claim
Al Jazeera wrote a Twitter post sharing news related to the Taliban.
News posted on
Emerging story
Social media users, especially in India, widely circulated a screenshot of a Twitter post from Al Jazeera English. The screenshot has an image of a young girl on the floor with what appears to be Taliban fighters surrounding her. While the text in the photo reads, “Taliban started abducting minor girls from their home. Taliban Fighters are killing the parents who are refusing to give their daughters to Taliban.” The claim has been shared in both a satirical manner as well as real news.
Misbar’s Analysis
MENA: In the circulating screenshot, the first glaring telltale is that Al Jazeera is misspelled to ‘Aljajeera’. Secondly, the handle and Twitter name do not correspond to the real accounts seen below. The Al Jazeera English Twitter handle is @AJEnglish. In contrast, the Al Jazeera Breaking News account is @AJENews, as can be seen below.
Furthermore, the Misbar team searched both the accounts and found no such post-dated on the 17th of August 2021. The image of the girl surrounded by Taliban fighters was put through TinEye reverse image search and was found to be posted in 2016 of a reenactment in Afghanistan as explained below, and has nothing to do with the Taliban’s current takeover.
Although there have been reports of forced marriages, these are yet to be confirmed. Meanwhile, a Taliban spokesperson has refuted the allegations. Nonetheless, given the findings, the Misbar team finds that the post has been doctored and that no Al Jazeera accounts posted the news.
