A photo of a prisoner model at the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam is falsely shared as that of Syria’s Sednaya prison
A post going viral on social media (here, here, and here) shows a photo of a prisoner, with an accompanying claim that it is from Sednaya Prison in Syria. The post is shared in the context of recent developments in Syria. On 08 December 2024, reports emerged that the regime of Bashar al-Assad had officially ended after Syrian rebels took control of the capital, Damascus, forcing Assad to flee the country. Following these events, thousands of prisoners were reportedly released from the Sednaya Prison. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Photo shows a prisoner from Sednaya Prison in Syria.
Fact: The viral photo is from the War Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and not a real photo of a prisoner from Sednaya Prison in Syria. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
A Google Lens search of the viral post’s screenshot led us to an article on the ‘dzen.ru’ website featuring the viral photo. The article revealed that the photo is from the Museum of War Victims in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
We confirmed the location on Google Maps and found the same viral photos in the War Museum’s photos in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The comparison is shown below.
Additionally, we found a YouTube video (archived) titled “Con Dao Jail Saigon Vietnam,” dated 15 March 2017. At the 3.10-minute timestamp, we noticed that the visuals matched the viral photo.
To sum up, a photo of a prisoner model at the War Remnants Museum in Vietnam is falsely shared as that of Syria’s Sednaya prison.