Many accounts on social media circulated images of content creator Ghazi al-Salloum wearing military dress, alleging that he had been a member of the Fourth Division of the former regime before later turning to cooking content.
The fact-checking team ran digital tracing using keywords and a reverse image search via Google Lens, along with a review of open sources, and found that Ghazi al-Salloum had published the original images on his personal page, explaining that the circulating images had been manipulated by compositing his face onto them. The verification showed that the original images do not feature al-Salloum but other people, and that one image dates back to 22 September 2015 and documented fighters in the ranks of the former regime forces, some of whom later left for European countries, while the second image had earlier been published as documenting former regime fighters in the al-Midan district of Damascus.
Why is this claim misleading?
An error in identity attribution: The claim relied on images belonging to other people, onto which the face of Ghazi al-Salloum was digitally composited, falsely suggesting that he took part in fighting within the ranks of the former regime.
