Some of the most incendiary accusations made against Iran’s government by corporate media, celebrity influencers and Western leaders in the past months are little more than fabrications. And most remain uncorrected.
by Setareh Sadeqi and Christopher Weaver
Part 7 - Former footballer Ali Karimi scores hat trick of blatant lies
A former Iranian football star with 14.4 million followers on Instagram named Ali Karimi has played an especially influential role in the current unrest in the country of his birth. He has also contributed to three widely disseminated lies. Despite his lack of credibility, the Scrooge-like Karimi was warmly received by the German President this week in a bid to bolster support for the unrest.
Ali has claimed the picture below shows an Iranian protester shot dead by a DShK heavy machine gun. The Dushka or DShK 1938, fires 12.7×108-millimeter rounds, which are nearly ten percent larger than .50 caliber rounds which are so devastating that their shockwave can cause lethal neurological damage.
Ali has claimed the picture below shows an Iranian protester shot dead by a DShK heavy machine gun. The Dushka or DShK 1938, fires 12.7×108-millimeter rounds, which are nearly ten percent larger than .50 caliber rounds which are so devastating that their shockwave can cause lethal neurological damage.
Ali’s bogus image was immediately debunked by one of his own fans (see the text above circled in red). “I loved and still love Ali Karimi,” the fan stated, “but to be honest, this is a picture of my friend in the neighboring village, after he had a motorcycle accident a few months ago”. The fan then posted the picture on the right side and stated, “This is the full picture from my own phone.”
The man in the picture turns out to be Ali Hamidvand, a resident of the village of Varineh in Hamedan Province. His leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident which took place on July 13, 2022. In a December 2022 interview, an indignant Hamidvand asked the judiciary to take action against Ali Karimi, accusing him of exploiting a photo of Hamidvand to advance his cynical regime change campaign. Hamidvand stated that Karimi had dishonored him and his family during an agonizing and traumatic experience.
The man in the picture turns out to be Ali Hamidvand, a resident of the village of Varineh in Hamedan Province. His leg was amputated after a motorcycle accident which took place on July 13, 2022. In a December 2022 interview, an indignant Hamidvand asked the judiciary to take action against Ali Karimi, accusing him of exploiting a photo of Hamidvand to advance his cynical regime change campaign. Hamidvand stated that Karimi had dishonored him and his family during an agonizing and traumatic experience.
Next, Ali Karimi took images of a bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2016 and falsely portrayed them as an Iranian state-sponsored massacre in the Kurdish city of Javanrood, Iran.
In another case of blatant deception, Karimi snatched a photo from the 2012 holiday fundraiser of a Pakistani charity showing a distraught young girl cradling her younger brother in her lap in the midst of a scorching heat wave, and falsely portrayed its contents as depicting Baluchi children abused by Iran’s security forces. He wrote: “These people’s rights have always been violated throughout their lives. They didn’t deserve bullets. #MyIran #Sistan_Baluchestan”.
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