Fact-Check: Images of wounded man not taken from South Sudan

By Charles Lotara

Disturbing images of a man under intensive care unit are being peddled by social media platforms with claims that the man was found unconscious in part of South Sudan.

On Tuesday evening, Insight Juba, a Facebook page with over 16k followers boldly claimed that the images are those of Deng Wol Deng, a university graduate from Western Bhar-el-Ghazal State who got ambushed along Juba – Nimule Highway.

In another staggering claim, the page says the victim in the images was on his way to Eastern Equatoria to assist a group of physically challenged children when his car was attacked along the road leaving two people dead with one survivor.

With scant details of the incident and with no citation of official sources, the page called on the general public to avoid travelling along the Juba – Nimule Highway and urged security forces to provide protection.

Insight Juba, which was created in 2020, cited 64 Tribes, another Facebook page as the primary source of their story.

However, a quick search through the Facebook page of 64 Tribes in relation to the story returned no result.

There have been no official reports of armed violence along the Juba – Nimule Highway in the last two months.

A geo-location search using Pic2Map returned no EXIF data for obvious reasons. Pic2Map requires unaltered photo files in order to process the data, which is most likely not the case with this image. And, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter strip out EXIF data from uploaded photos, which is true of the images circulating.

But a Google reverse search showed that the incident the man in the picture was caught up in actually happened in Omdurman during the #ParadeNovember2021 when Sudanese took to the streets to register their displeasure with the military plot to bequeath civilian rule.

The situation led to civil unrest with an unconfirmed number of people getting either injured or killed. The images were first posted on 22/11/2021 within 6:47PM by two Twitter accounts all claiming that the man whose identity was not established at the time, was in a critical condition and admitted at Al-Waad Hospital in Omdurman, one of the most populated cities in Sudan.

But both Twitter accounts carry pseudonyms and their bios only imply that they are pro-revolution. However, this does not disqualify the possibility of the images being taken in Sudan as they first appeared on Sudanese-run Twitter platforms.

#FactsMatter, Don’t be a victim of fake news; instead, let’s fight misinformation on both mainstream and alternative media. To avoid spreading false information, don’t share content you’re not sure about or don’t know where it came from.

To learn more about our fact-checking process, go to https://211check.org/how-to-fact-check/ or send us a WhatsApp message at +211 917 298 255 to present a claim, and our team will immediately fact-check it and respond.