Numerous accounts on social media circulated a photo claiming it showed a young man named "Maysar Saloum" from the city of Tartus, alleging he was shot dead by a member of the Syrian government following a dispute over a parking space, and that the shooting came after the gunman learned that "Saloum" was from the Alawite community.
The fact-checking team carried out a digital trace of the photo by searching relevant keywords, and reached the account of the person the circulated photo belongs to. He turned out to be named "Ibrahim al-Ali", and he had denied the circulating report on his Facebook page, confirming that the photo is of him and that the claim attached to it is misleading.
Why is this claim misleading?
An error in identity attribution: The claim relied on a personal photo belonging to another man who is still alive, recast as the victim of a sectarian killing, in order to inflame sectarian polarisation and pin responsibility for an unverified incident on the Syrian government.
