| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Iran passport found at Niagara Falls explosion site? Nope, it's a hoax!
India Today found that no such passport was recovered from the site of the Niagara Falls explosion. The document being shared is doctored and features the photo of comedian Sam Hyde.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
No such passport was reportedly recovered from the Niagara Falls explosion site. This image is fabricated.
On November 22, a speeding car crashed in flames on a bridge linking the US and Canada at Niagara Falls, killing two, and sending both countries’ governments into high alert over a possible terrorist act. While America’s domestic intelligence and security service, the FBI, later concluded that the crash was not related to terrorism, the panic had already led to disinformation on social media.
“BREAKING: Police have IDENTIFIED the driver of the Niagara Falls explosion from a passport found at the scene as 47-year-old Iranian-Canadian YouTuber by the name of Saman Heydari,” read a viral post that contained the photo of a document with “Islamic Republic of Iran” written on it.
India Today found that no such passport was recovered from the site of the Niagara Falls incident. The document being shared is doctored. The actual image shows an Iranian visa issued in 2015. The photo of US comedian Sam Hyde was digitally added to it.
Our Probe
A quick reverse search of the viral image led us to a post on a blog titled “aroundtheworldin800days.com” that contained a similar-looking photo. The blog post run by travellers Andy Smith and Emma Smart described the process of getting an Iranian visa. We compared the visas in the blog with the post and found that it was Emma Smart’s Iran visa in the viral post, only with the photo changed, and some of the details redacted.
Who’s in the photo?
Reverse-searching the photograph on the visa, we found its GIF version on the GIF library Tenor. Its title was “Sam Hyde Get Well Soon GIF”. Subsequently, we found the image in question shared on Hyde’s Instagram account on August 20, 2023.
According to The New York Times, Sam Hyde is a comedian whose name has surfaced in the context of mass shootings to the point that “Sam Hyde is the shooter” has become an identifiable meme.
The US comedian was earlier falsely labelled as the murderer of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and even as the Nashville mass shooter.
At the time of writing this report, the names of the victims of the Niagara Falls accident had not been revealed to the press. According to Robert Restaino, the mayor of Niagara Falls, the victims were a man and his wife from Grand Island, New York, both in their 50s. He, per the New York Times, declined to release their names because the family had not been officially notified.
Thus, it is clear that the photo of an Iranian visa allegedly found at the scene of the crash is a hoax.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)