On April 22, 2024, a claim circulated on social media platform X that the Iranian president met PTI founder Imran Khan in Adiala Jail during his trip to Lahore. However, no meeting occurred between the two.
Iranian president meets Imran Khan in Adiala Jail
The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.
To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team checked for the PTI’s response to the rumoured meeting between party founder Imran Khan and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
On April 22, 2024, a video was shared on X by a user, who appears to be a PTI supporter based on his past posts, with the caption, “Iranian president meets Imran Khan in Adiala Jail.”
The caption further said, “Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Chaudhry Parvez Elahi were also present at the moment. During the meeting, the Iranian President got emotional. The Iranian president announced to play a role in the release of Imran Khan. Media reports.”
The post gained over 98,000 views.
The video he shared belonged to a digital news channel, CurrentNN, that ran the news on Imran’s alleged meeting with the Iranian president on April 22.
Similar posts were shared by other PTI supporters on X. The posts can be seen here and here.
The iVerify Pakistan team sought to determine the veracity of the claim due to its higher virality, the public’s keen interest in the former prime minister who is presently incarcerated in Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail and also intense interest in the visit of the Iranian president and his activities.
To investigate the claim, the team checked the official accounts of PTI and its members to see if they shared any such news and found a post shared by Abuzar Salman Niazi, a member of Imran’s legal team and a PTI core committee member, on his X account on April 22.
In his post, he debunked the viral claim and wrote, “The news regarding Iran president meeting Kaptaan is fake.”
Curiously, the team also observed that other users here and here on X attempted to debunk the claim by sharing a screenshot of a tweet from Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Iran’s official news outlet.
The alleged tweet said, “Office of the Iranian president rejects social media rumors in Pakistan alleging a meeting of the president with Imran Khan in Rawalpindi Jail. The president respects the ex-prime minister, but it is not in Iranian protocols to meet jailed leaders, the spokesperson told IRNA.”
However, the iVerify team checked IRNA‘s X account and found no such post on its timeline.
The iVerify Pakistan team then ran the alleged IRNA tweet screenshot through the image manipulation detection tool Fake Image Detector, which confirmed that the circulated screenshot was doctored.
The Iranian president arrived in Pakistan for an official three-day visit on April 22, with Islamabad as his first destination where he met President Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
The visit marked the first of its kind by any head of state after the February 8 general elections. On April 23, President Raisi travelled to Lahore and Karachi.
Meanwhile, Imran is currently incarcerated in Adiala Jail after convictions in various cases. He was arrested on August 5, 2023.
The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim regarding the meeting of the Iranian president with Imran is false.
A member of Imran’s legal team himself denied the veracity of the claim.
Abuzar Salman Niazi April 22, 2024, X post:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240424092010/https://twitter.com/SalmanKNiazi1/status/1782424150637793454
