By: Umme Kulsum
May 15 2023
Video of protests outside former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s London home predates Imran Khan’s arrest
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
The video of a 2022 protest outside Sharif's residence in London was misinterpreted as being against Khan's recent arrest.
Claim ID 948be5dd
Context
On May 9, 2023, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was arrested by the country’s anti-corruption agency. Following his arrest, violent altercations were reported between Khan's supporters and the Pakistani police force.
Amid this, a video that purports to show a huge crowd gathered in London was extensively shared online, claiming that protests against Khan's arrest were taking place in front of another former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s residence in the U.K. A Facebook user, ‘Proud To Be British,’ shared the video with a caption that read, “This isn’t Pakistan. This is London. They’re kicking off at the arrest of the country's former Prime Minister Imran Khan.” The video has gathered a number of views and likes.
However, the widely shared video is unrelated to Khan's recent arrest.
In Fact
Logically Facts found the same 13-second video shared on Twitter by a Pakistani journalist in April 2022. A longer version of the video was shared by a Twitter user named Shoib Raza on April 18, 2022, with a caption that read, “Aerial view of protest outside Nawaz Sharif residency London.”
Logically Facts also found an article dated April 17, 2022, by The Express Tribune, a publication based in Pakistan, that had the same visuals from the viral video. According to the article, the visuals were of a massive crowd gathered in London's Hyde Park to support Khan, who was ousted as prime minister on April 9, 2022, in a parliamentary no-confidence vote. The protesters gathered outside Sharif's home were demanding Khan’s return to power. Later, Shehbaz Sharif, the leader of the opposition in Pakistan and Sharif's brother was elected as successor to the ousted prime minister.
After the Khan's arrest on May 9, numerous fake and irrelevant videos and photographs have circulated on social media as recent.
Verdict
The video of people protesting outside Sharif's London residence after Khan was ousted from power in 2022 has been wrongly shared as visuals of protest after his arrest this month. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.