
“There would be big alarm bells for me, because when I’ve seen inconsistencies like that in the past they’ve been on really shoddily made forgeries,” Charlie Winter, a researcher at Georgia State University, told AFP. “With something as important as this, it’s important to look at it with as suspicious, discerning and cynical an eye as possible,” he added. Fake IS group documents have been circulated and distributed to media outlets several times over the past few years. A December 2015 document that purportedly called on IS group fighters to abandon the Iraqi city of Fallujah was tweeted by Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the US-led campaign in Iraq, before it was revealed to be a fake. “Many people on the border between Syria and Turkey are trying to sell almost anything with black flags, fake stamps of the Islamic State group and logos,” Nasr said. “Many journalists, including me, have confronted this reality.” In an interview with the Washington Post in December 2015, British analyst Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi noted that, “The fakes that have been circulated are largely poor in quality. The forgers seem to be ignorant of Islamic State labeling, there are recurring motifs, and we see some clear attempts to take jabs at certain actors perceived to be backing the Islamic State.”
Source: Middle East – Questions raised over authenticity of ‘leaked’ IS group documents – France 24
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