Clip showing burnt trucks was filmed in 2022, not following Imran Khan's arrest
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 19, 2023 at 09:59
- 4 min read
- By Rimal FARRUKH, AFP Pakistan
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"Trucks belonging to Malik Shahzad Awan -- a member of the provincial assembly of Sindh -- have been burnt and his entire business has been destroyed for not quitting PTI," reads the Urdu-language caption to the video shared on the verified Facebook page of PTI in Punjab province.
The video has been viewed over three million times since it was posted on May 29, 2023.
Khan's three-day detention that month sparked nationwide protests and led to a sweeping crackdown with the military vowing to tighten "the noose of law" around those involved in violence.
The turmoil also led to the resignations of much of the PTI's leadership, which have left Khan increasingly isolated at his home in the eastern city of Lahore, from where he ventures out only for court appearances.
Malik Shahzad Awan, the politician mentioned in the post, reportedly announced on June 5 he would quit PTI (archived link).
The video was also shared with a similar false claim elsewhere on Twitter and on Facebook.
Pakistan media organisations Geo News and The News International reported Khan tweeted the video with the false claim (archived links here and here). AFP cannot independently verify the screenshots of the tweet which reports say had been deleted.
Responding to the claim that Awan's vehicles were burnt, Irfan Bahadur, a spokesperson for the Sindh police, told AFP on June 13: "We do not have any such incident reports."
Nowshera tanker fire
Moreover, the video shared in the posts is old and actually shows the aftermath of a fire in an oil depot in Nowshera in northern Pakistan in 2022.
Keyword searches on Google led to a longer video which was posted on Facebook on May 1, 2022 (archived link).
The one minute eight-second video's Urdu-language caption says: "Nowshera: Nowshera Taru Jabba oil depot's nearby administration's mishandling has led to the loss of billions of Rupees from the national treasury. The oil tanker terminal has 150 tankers filled with oil."
The video in the misleading posts matches the original from the 1:02 mark to the end.
Below is a screenshot comparison of one of the false posts (left) and the Facebook post from 2022 (right):
Two frames of the original video also match two different AFP photos on May 1, 2022 of the Nowshera oil depot after the fire.
A scene similar to an AFP photo here can be seen at the one-second mark of the video (archived link).
"Owners inspect the oil tankers which were damaged in a fire that broke out at an oil tanker terminal in Nowshera on May 1, 2022," the caption of the AFP photo reads.
Below is a comparison of the AFP photo (left) and a frame from the original video showing a similar scene, with the corresponding features highlighted by AFP:
Another AFP photo published on the same day here also shows a similar scene to the original video at its 39-second mark (archived link).
Below is a comparison of the second AFP photo (left) and a frame from the original video, with corresponding features highlighted:
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