Doctored photo does not show Bangladesh Islamist leader visiting holiest place for Muslims

The altered picture was shared in a Facebook group with more than 27,000 members.

"He is the only person from Bangladesh who had the good fortune to enter the inner room of Holy Kaaba. May Allah grant him the highest place in heaven. Ameen," reads the Bengali-language post.

The picture of a man who appears to be Sayedee is circled in red.

The post was shared on August 15, one day after the vice president of Bangladeshi opposition Jamaat-e-Islami partydied in a prison hospital.

He was sentenced to death in 2013 on eight charges of murder, rape and persecution of Hindus, with his conviction by a controversial war crimes court triggering the deadliest political violence in Bangladesh's history.

Bangladesh's Supreme Court later said Sayedee should spend "the rest of his natural life" in jail for crimes during the 1971 liberation war with Pakistan.

Jamaat shot to prominence in the 1980s after he started preaching in some of the Muslim-majority nation's top mosques.

In his heyday, he would draw hundreds of thousands to his sessions and CDs of his speeches were top sellers.

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Screenshot of the post sharing the altered picture. Taken August 28, 2023.

The picture was shared across social media posts on Facebok here, here and on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Sayedee had claimed in one of his sermons that he was able to visit the inner room of the Kaaba shrine near the centre of the Great Mosque in Mecca in the early 1990s.

While AFP cannot independently verify this claim, the picture shared in the posts has been digitally doctored.

A reverse image search on Google found the original photo in a report in Nigeria's Guardian newspaper from February 27, 2016 (archived link).

"President Muhammadu Buhari along with members of his entire delegation from Nigeria was early yesterday granted access to the Holy Ka'aba, in Makkah, where he offered prayers for the peace and progress of the country," The Guardian reported.

An AFP reporter in Nigeria identified the man whose image had been replaced with Sayedee as Bashir Abubakar, a former aide to Buhari.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the altered photo (left) and the genuine picture (right):

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Footage of Buhari and his entourage visiting the Kaaba visit by Buhari was broadcast on March 2, 2016 by Nigerian public broadcast service NTA News (archived link).