Viral image said to be of ‘Belgian’ women assaulted in Islamabad is of Czech model from 2019

The iVerify Pakistan team has reviewed this content and determined that it is false.

To reach this conclusion, the iVerify Pakistan team investigated the picture via a reverse image search.

Multiple social media accounts shared an image of a woman on August 15, 2024, claiming she was a Belgian foreigner who was allegedly assaulted in Islamabad. However, the picture was of Czech model Tereza Hluskova from 2019.

A woman was found bound and gagged on a roadside in Islamabad by the police on August 14. She introduced herself as a Belgian citizen and told police she arrived in Islamabad around six months ago. She claimed that she had been living with a man and alleged that he had repeatedly raped her.

HOW IT STARTED

On August 15, a user on social media platform X, Faraz Pervaiz, a Pakistani Christian based in Thailand who frequently shares content about alleged rights violations of minorities in Pakistan, posted an image of a woman in tears, holding her head with one hand as uniformed people surrounded her.

The caption of the post read: “Belgian women sexually Assaulted for five days by Muslims in Pakistan. The victim was found with her hands tied in Sector G-6 and was rescued by local police after a citizen alerted authorities in Islamabad.”

The post gained 1.6 million views and was shared 8,700 times.

Several Indian accounts on X also shared the image with the same claim, as can be seen in a post here with the caption: “A visiting Belgian woman raped for five days in Pakistan. Why do they even visit that gutter country even after witnessing so many such cases?”

The post was viewed more than 8,500 times. Another post by an account focusing on news updates gained 13m views.

The same image was shared here, here and here.

METHODOLOGY

A fact check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and the seriously concerning nature of the matter since it pertained to the safety of foreigners visiting Pakistan, as well as because many users were witnessed in the comments disputing the authenticity of the image.

A reverse image search conducted to gather more details about the picture yielded news stories from March 21, 2019, using the image which identified the woman as a Czech model involved in a drug trafficking case in Pakistan.

The image was of her reaction outside court after she was sentenced.

Tereza Hluskova was intercepted by customs officials at Lahore airport on January 10, 2018, while trying to smuggle 8.5 kilogrammes of heroin from Pakistan to Abu Dhabi. She was convicted and sentenced to eight years and eight months in jail in March 2019 but subsequently challenged the conviction, claiming someone had placed the drugs in her suitcase.

The Lahore High Court eventually acquitted the model on November 1, 2021, due to the prosecution’s failure to prove its case.

Separately, as per a Dawn news report dated August 16, 2024, the woman who claimed to be Belgian turned out to be a permanent resident of Rawalpindi. Through her facial recognition and fingerprint impression, the woman was identified as a Pakistani national so there was no Belgian woman to speak of in the first place who was sexually assaulted.

FACT-CHECK STATUS: FALSE

The claim regarding a picture of a Belgian woman in tears after being allegedly sexually assaulted in Islamabad is false.

The picture was actually of a Czech model of 2019 and there was no Belgian woman who was assaulted in Islamabad in the first place.