A page calling itself the Observatory for Documenting Violations Against Minorities in Syria circulated a report whose publishers claimed that a Shiite young man named Ahmed Mahdi al-Abd had been killed and his body dumped in front of the Citadel of Aleppo, attaching a personal photograph of the man to the claim.
The fact-checking team followed up on the circulating claim and carried out research and cross-checking of information, and it emerged that the report is entirely fabricated. The man who appears in the original photograph, who is not a Shiite as the post claimed, came forward himself and shared the circulating post to refute it, denying the report of his killing completely and confirming that he is alive.
Why is this claim misleading?
Fabricated news: A report was fabricated about a person being killed on a sectarian basis, using a genuine photograph of a living civilian to claim that his body had been dumped in front of a prominent landmark, the Citadel of Aleppo, in order to inflame sectarian tension.
