Accounts on social media circulated a circular attributed to Interior Minister Anas Khattab, instructing commanders of internal security and police units to take a tougher line against acts of rioting and breaches of public security, with posts linking the decision to the protests that followed the increase in fuel prices.
The Kashaf fact-checking team contacted a source at the Ministry of Interior, who denied the authenticity of the attached statement and confirmed that the interior minister had issued neither this statement nor any similar one. Examining the statement, the team carried out a technical analysis of its content and formatting and identified a number of indicators pointing to its inauthenticity, foremost the absence of a reference number for the decision, alongside spelling, grammatical and formatting errors, including missing diacritical marks, inconsistencies in some plural forms and pronouns, and words running together where spaces were missing, as well as poor text formatting. The team also noted that the font style used in the statement differed from previous circulars issued by the interior minister, in addition to distortions in the official seal, among them a missing dot in the word "the Republic" and a distortion in the word "Syrian".
Why is this claim misleading?
Fabricating administrative decisions: A document bearing the form of an official circular was circulated without having been issued by the Ministry of Interior, and was attributed directly to the minister, in order to suggest a hardline security posture towards the protests.
