Syrian Rebel Fakery

This page will gather proven or well-illustrated instances of rebel forces, activists, and any allied others, using outright lies, actors, fake images, fake blood, etc. Especially the visually verifiable instances. (more forthcoming)

Opposition (to Truth) Activists

 * Danny Dayem aka Syrian Danny
 * Omar Telawi ("caught embellishing" only)
 * Khaled Abu Saleh
 * Tom MacMaster aka Gay Girl In Damascus
 * Mehdi Masroor Biswas aka ShamiWitness
 * Others...

Fake Videos
Fake defections: fake helicopter in Ukrainian museum, fake MIG 21 in Egypt. Fake GRAD rockets in Aleppo.
 * FSA - How they make FAKE videos to lie against Syrians
 * More Fake Propganda From Terrorists Uploaders Against Syria That is Broadcast Worldwide

There are a lot of these we never bothered cataloguing. Here's one I just discovered: Hasraya checkpoint abuse video - Fake WWF/WWE-style wrestling moves employed on a teenage kid. Even though it's probably fake, a guy seeming like his older brother decides it's enough, slaps the torturer on elbow, and he stops. This video shows how a crazed commander ran this place before rebels showed up to liberate it, and so he's behind all the dead bodies rebels found there, at the same time as the 2012 Ma'an massacre nearby. --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:21, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Faking With Kids

 * Orphan sleeping between the graves of his parents: Independent: 'Heartbreaking' Syria orphan photo wasn't taken in Syria and not of orphan
 * l-Otaibi Directed Messaged the first Twitter user to re-purpose the image, @americanbadu, to ask them to correct it and explain why they claimed it was of Syria.


 * He received the response: "Why don’t you just let go and claim it is a picture from Syria and gain a reward from God. You are exaggerating."

Child buried in rubble

 * Astonishing video shows moment Syrian toddler pulled alive from rubble after Aleppo bombing – LIZZIE DEARDEN, The Independent, 25 January 2014
 * ''A toddler completely buried under rubble in Syria has been pulled out alive by rescuers who dug with their bare hands.
 * ''This video, posted on YouTube by Syrian activists, appears to show a recovery team frantically digging to rescue the trapped youngster in Aleppo, reportedly after government bombings
 * ''After apparently hearing cries while scouting for survivors, the group of men are seen desperately clawing masonry and dust away with their hands.
 * ''At first, the child cannot be seen but an arm and a head appears, then an orange jumper caked in dirt.
 * ''When rescuers realise the child is alive, the furious digging speeds up and one man uses a pickaxe to carefully dislodge masonry.
 * ''The toddler appears dazed but breathing, blinking slowly and shielding its eyes from the bright sunlight.
 * ''Triumphant cheers and shouts of “Allahu akbar” – “God is great” - ripple through the large crowd when the child is finally freed.
 * ''The footage was dated on Wednesday – the day after government air strikes on the rebel-held district.
 * ''According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 10 people including two children were killed in the bombardment aimed at a bus garage.

Aftab Bukhari on Facebook: It's staged. Posted by London based "Syrian Observatory of human rights". Even if the overacting like cows and donkeys doesn't give it away, at 30 seconds you see green garden hose used for breathing. Then some seconds later, the video cuts away when they remove it. They dig in the same spot as if they know where the child is, claiming to hear it, but child is pulled from under sand, barely responsive. So they knew where the child is, and tried to cover that up by claiming to hear it when they obviously couldn't it.

Bana Alabed

 * Bana of Aleppo: The story so far, Barbara McKenzie, November 28, 2016


 * The Bana story all began in September of 2016 when 7 year old Bana began to tweet from eastern Aleppo to share with the world her anxiety about living in a war-torn city. It is perhaps a sad reflection of the world we live in that her arrival on the social media scene provoked a certain amount of scepticism, hilarity even. It seems only fair to endeavour to consider the Bana case objectively.

The twitter account was deleted on December 4, 2016 but quickly reinstated.


 * Bana Alabed the Exploited Child – War, to “Save the Children”, Ken Stone, 21st Century Wire, November 2, 2017

Fake Guns

 * Fake Gun story


 * According to an analysis by a curator at a British arms museum, the 11 men were each holding a TD-2007, a Chinese-made toy replica of the MP-5 submachine gun, marketed as appropriate for children above the age of 5. To each, the men had affixed an extension — perhaps a painted dowel or a section of pipe — masquerading as a long barrel.  --Charles Wood (talk) 00:45, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Disturbing Fake Videos Are Making The Rounds In Syria – TRACEY SHELTON, Business Insider, NOV 14 2012
 * ''Last month, a fighter in Aleppo handed a reporter his cell phone, shaking his head in disbelief. “Assad, Assad,” he said.
 * ''On the screen was a video of someone beheading a prisoner with a chainsaw. It had been circulating in Syria for at least a year. The footage itself is very real, but it is five years old, and was shot in Mexico. Drug lords carried out the crime. The video has been used by rebels in conflicts all over the world.

I have never figured out how you would upload videos to your cell phone, neither have the western war reporters. The story of "a fighter handing his cell phone to a reporter" was played over and over again in Libya. CNN even took porn videos for real. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 09:15, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Blast! I'm an expert again! My day job often involves meeting unsavioury ruffians who have been detected with illegal material on their phones. Depending on the OS they can download images and videos from their computer, or from the Internet, or have it sent by 'friends' to them. The last option seems to be common on Blackberries and very common in the Middle-East.
 * I did one case with a UAE national who claimed people sent videos to his Blackberry and he couldn't stop them doing it. The jury didn't believe him... --Charles Wood (talk) 10:18, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Fake snipers

 * What the Fake Syria Sniper Boy Video Tell Us About Media Experts – Maram Susli (a.k.a. Mimi Al Laham / SyrianGirl), 27.11.2014
 * ''Many mainstream media websites helped a fake video go viral this month. The video showing a young Syrian boy running through sniper fire to save a little girl, was exposed as a fake when the Norwegian producer Lars Klevberg made the fact public. One of the stated aims of the Norwegian film makers was to “see how the media would respond to a fake video.” This article examines how that experiment went.
 * ''The western press very quickly accepted the video as real and used it to support the US administration’s narrative on Syria. Many top US news sources began to spread the story. Even though the producer said he explicitly added big hints that the video was fake, like the children surviving multiple gun shots.
 * ''The fake sniper video wasn’t enough to support US government narratives by itself, as the now deleted original upload didn’t suggest the identity of the snipers. So the west’s media suggested that it was Syrian military snipers that were targeting the children without any evidence. Journalists failed to mention how they reached the conclusion that an actor in Malta was shot by the Syrian military. It may be that the western press is quick to trust pro-rebel sources, as the video was uploaded by the pro-rebel Sham Times along with their own twist.
 * ''The Guardian’s headline for the video was “Syrian boy ‘saves girl from army sniper’” and the Telegraph delicately suggested the Syrian military was responsible for the fake bullets. The International Business (IB) times stated, “the snipers, who reportedly are said to be the government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” IB Times never explicitly mentioned who reported this information. They then took it a step further and concluded the article with “the incident certainly is not the first time that Pro-Assad gunmen have targeted children”.