Bashar al-Assad's cousin allegedly hanged... Disinformation expert denies it
Since the fall of the Assad regime, images have been circulating on social media. They show the execution of a man presented as a cousin of the Syrian dictator.
The video is violent. A man's hanging from a crane, above a raging crowd. Shared on X (formerly Twitter), the hanging, according to some accounts, took place in the city of Latakia and concerns Sulaiman Hilal Assad, cousin of the former Syrian president and son of Hilal al-Assad, former head of the Latakia paramilitary group, underlines 20 Minutes. According to other sources, the executed man is Amar al-Assad, another cousin of Bashar al-Assad.
But... In reality, the sequence of rare violence doesn't show any of the members of the dictator's family. A specialist in the fight against disinformation in the Middle East, it was the Misbar website that first denied the information. As 20 Minutes specifies, the images, which were first broadcast on Facebook on December 7, were allegedly captured (according to the caption) in Khirbet Ghazala, in southeastern Syria. Still according to Misbar's analysis, the video shows the execution of Ammar el-Asaad and Diana Buteh by the military factions of the opposition. These individuals were reportedly sentenced to death after killing Diana Buteh's husband.
So beware of fake news, which is being widely disseminated on social media.
(MH with Manon Pierre - Source: 20 Minutes - Illustration: Unsplash)