Claim: An image shows human rights lawyer Imaan Mazari posing with university lecturer Usman Qazi, who was recently arrested for his alleged involvement with the militant group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
Fact: The image is doctored. The original photo shows Mazari next to her father.
An X user posted a photo (archive) that shows the lawyer and human rights activist Imaan Mazari posing for a selfie with Usman Qazi, a lecturer at the Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering, and Management Sciences in Quetta. The description states:
ایمان مزاری صاحبہ کی اگلی ٹویٹ کلبوش یادیو کے لئے ہوگی۔”
اگر انکو انڈیا نے وکالت کی فیس دی تو کلبوشن بھی بے گناہ اور کلبوشن کا دادا قائد اعظم کا ساتھی ثابت کرسکتی ہے۔ اور متوقع ٹویٹ آسکتا ہے کہ کلبوشن پاکستان میں قائد اعظم کے مزار پر حاضری کے لئے آرہا تھا
.”@ImaanZHazir
When translated into English, it reads: “Imaan Mazari’s next tweet will be for Kulbhushan Jadhav. If India pays her legal fees, then Kulbhushan can also prove that he is innocent and Kulbhushan’s grandfather was an associate of Quaid-e-Azam. And the expected tweet may come that Kulbhushan was coming to Pakistan to visit Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum.”
Recently, Qazi’s confession video surfaced in which he claims to have facilitated the proscribed militant group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).
The Chief Minister of Balochistan Sarfraz Bugti claimed that Usman Qazi was arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department of Balochistan (CTD) on 12 August, adding that the lecturer was found facilitating the BLA in conducting a terror plot on 14 August that would have targeted Independence Day celebrations in Balochistan. The confession video was recorded under police custody.
Human rights group Paank and some other individuals, including the lawyer Imaan Mazari and journalist Kiyya Baloch have questioned the validity of the confession.
Several lawyers who commented on Qazi’s video say that such a confession recorded under police custody does not qualify as evidence. Jalila Haider, a human rights defender and lawyer, said on X (archive) that “a confession given in front of cameras or while in police custody doesn’t hold legal weight. It is the court, not the media, that decides guilt or innocence. This is why due process is so critical.”
Advocate Faisal Siddiqui also told DW that such confessions do not hold legal status. “Apparently, this statement was taken in police custody. In which the professor may have admitted that someone had come to meet him, whose intention later turned out to be something else. But punishment cannot be given for such a statement. An FIR may be lodged, but evidence will be presented in court on the basis of which a decision will be made, not on the video or the statement given to the media. This decision is for the court, not the media,” Siddiqui said, according to DW’s Urdu report.
According to the same DW Urdu report, a close friend of Qazi’s, who spoke to the publication anonymously, claimed that the lecturer’s “family had no connection with extremist organisations and that they were direct victims of them.”
“Another friend said he regretted that such a case had come to light, which would validate the current narrative against students and educated people,” the report added.
The image of Imaan Mazari with Usman Qazi began circulating on social media soon after she posted (archive) on X that Qazi was not a terrorist. “He was a victim of Pakistan’s unending state-sponsored terrorism against its own citizens,” Mazari said in the post.
The lawyer also noted in the same post that after “each embarrassing security failure in Balochistan, the establishment, instead of bringing to an end its policy of enforced disappearances & killing and dumping Baloch youth, continues this propaganda to try to justify its war crimes against the Baloch people.”
The caption from the claim likely implies that Mazari has sympathies for those allegedly linked to the militant group BLA. False claims linking human rights defenders to militant groups have been debunked by Soch Fact Check in the past.
Disinformation targeting Imaan Mazari has also been debunked in the past here.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check analysed and found it is a doctored image.
Usman Qazi’s head stands out from its surroundings as if cut and pasted from another image on the photo; it appears like a sticker pasted on the image of someone else’s head. Compared to his head, Mazari’s photo has a smoother appearance against the background.
Upon closer inspection, the outline of a head of grey hair is also visible just behind Qazi’s black hair, which further suggests that it was pasted onto someone else’s image. This discrepancy is highlighted in the image below:
Image showing the discrepancy.
An analysis using forensic tools further revealed that the image has been manipulated. One such tool is InVid We Verify, which employs forensic filters to detect if an image has been tampered with.
The image was analysed using the Ghost and Block filters. These filters look for any “new element [that] has been removed or added to the image”, thus checking for any manipulations that occur due to these additions.
The first image below shows results from the Ghost filter; the blue areas from the filter are scattered throughout the image, whereas the brighter green areas (or white/light areas) are concentrated mainly around Qazi’s face, head, and shoulders. This indicates that the area around his head was likely edited or tampered with.
According to the Ghost filter’s description, “consistent white, light-green or light-blue regions against a black background may correspond to traces of tampering, especially if they do not correspond to edges, but to entire regions.”
Although both blue and light green regions are visible throughout the image, it is important to note that the light green areas in the picture below are more concentrated around Qazi’s head and shoulders.
Results from the Ghost filter using the InVid tool.
A second filter, called the Block filter, also shows a light green colour region around Qazi’s head, indicating that this area in the image was likely manipulated. “Any coherent region with different color to its surroundings may correspond to tampering, although white and light-green against a dark background are the most typical indication of tampering,” according to the description of the block filter.
Results from the Block filter using the InVid tool.
Taking cues from this, a keyword search yielded the original image of Imaan Mazari with her father (archive) that she posted on X on 31 May 2018. The description of the post reads: “It’s my aba’s 60th birthday today. When i wished him this morning, he said: “you and Sabeel are the best gift God has given me”. I told him to go shopping – he clearly needs to get a better gift! May he have many more <3”.
The side-by-side comparison of the image from the claim with the one posted by Mazari in 2018 is shown below. It confirms that an original picture of Imaan Mazari with her father has been altered to instead show Usman Qazi sitting next to her.
On the left is the doctored image. On the right is the original photo of Mazari with her father.
Therefore, Soch Fact Check concludes that the photo of Mazari with Usman Qazi is fake.
Virality
The X post garnered 80,700 views and was liked 920 times.
The doctored image also appeared on X here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here (first image), here, here, and here.
The doctored image also appeared on Instagram here (archive), here (archive), and here (archive).
On Facebook here, here, here, here.
Conclusion: The image of Iawyer Imaan Mazari posing with Usman Qazi is doctored.
Background image in cover photo: The Nation
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