Fact Check: Doctored Photo of Syrian President Removing Shoes While Meeting Trump

About this record

This incident page is generated from structured reporting inputs and public sources. It is intended to support tracking and review, not to replace primary source verification.

Incident details

Incident ID: inc_2026_05_31_8a0da1a2
Date source: llm_extracted_from_article_text
Country: Unknown
Platform: Social Media
Incident type: Manipulated Photo
Verification level: reported_but_unverified

Harm types

Misinformation

Topics

Image Manipulation

Summary

A doctored photo collage circulated on Facebook on May 31, 2026, falsely depicted Syrian President Abu Mohammed al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Sharaa) removing his shoes during a meeting with US President Donald Trump and wearing them while performing Islamic prayer. Tempo.co English fact-checked the content using reverse image searches and verified reports from other credible sources, including the Dubai media website Albayan and the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA). The investigation confirmed that the original photo of the meeting, taken on September 29, 2025, showed al-Sharaa wearing dark brown dress shoes, and photos from the Eid al-Fitr prayer at the People’s Palace Mosque in Damascus showed him without shoes, wearing only socks. Tempo concluded that the images and the accompanying narrative containing hate speech were fabricated.

Sources

Fact Check: Doctored Photo of Syrian President Removing Shoes While Meeting Trump

en.tempo.co · 2026-06-06 · Primary