Pages on social media circulated a video clip that its publishers claimed shows Maria, the daughter of Maher al-Sharaa, brother of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, riding a horse at one of the equestrian clubs in Damascus.
The Kashaf team verified the claim by tracing the source of the video and the date it was published, and by contacting the management of the equestrian club from which the clip was published. The director of the club confirmed to Kashaf that the video belongs to Judy al-Hajj Hussein, a student from Deir ez-Zor who studies engineering in Saudi Arabia, and not to Maria al-Sharaa as the circulators of the clip claimed.
It was not possible to reach the student directly, according to what the director of the club stated, because of her psychological condition. Based on the results of the verification, the identity of the girl appearing in the video does not match the person named in the posts.
Why is this claim misleading?
An error in identity attribution: The claim rested on a video clip that was circulated attributed to a person other than the one appearing in it, as it was ascribed to Maria, the daughter of Maher al-Sharaa, instead of the student Judy al-Hajj Hussein, according to what the director of the club confirmed.
