This image has circulated since 2017 in Egyptian media reports about a Cairo kidnapping attempt

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on December 27, 2019 at 08:11
  • 2 min read
  • By AFP India
A photo has been shared in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts alongside a claim it shows a man dressed as a woman during protests in Delhi in December 2019. The claim is false; the image has circulated online since at least August 2017 in Egyptian media reports about an arrest in Cairo; the same image was previously fact-checked by AFP after it emerged in misleading posts in Arabic language about an incident in Iraq. 

The photo was published in a Facebook post here on December 17, 2019.

The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “A woman who was part of the violence in Jamia in Delhi was actually a man.”

Jamia is a neighbourhood in the southern part of Delhi, where police clashed with protesters who were against a recently passed citizenship amendment bill. This is an AFP report about the protests.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post: 

Image

The same photo was published here and here on Twitter alongside a similar claim.

The claim is false; the image has circulated online since at least 2017 in Egyptian media reports about a man who was arrested on suspicion of attempting to kidnap a child in Cairo.

The image in the misleading posts was published here by Egyptian news site Sharkia Today on August 25, 2017.

The article’s Arabic-language headline translates to English as: “Man disguised as a woman to kidnap children in Cairo handed over to police.”

The article reads: "Egyptian citizens arrested a young man dressed as a woman who tried to kidnap a child in Cairo and handed him over to the police".

Below is a screenshot of the photo published by Sharkia Today:

Image

The same image was published by Egyptian news site Al Bawaba News here on August 25, 2017, with a similar headline stating the man was arrested in Cairo. 

It was also published here by Egyptian television channel Ahlmasrnews on the same day alongside a similar headline.

AFP previously debunked misleading claims linking the same image to an incident in Iraq in Arabic language here on December 13, 2019.
 

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