Fact-check: Nawaz Sharif heckled by PTI supporters on flight back to Pakistan?
Actual video shows journalists protesting onboard after being prevented from approaching Nawaz Sharif during the flight
Updated Friday Nov 22 2024
A video with over 800,000 views claims to show former prime minister Nawaz Sharif being jeered at by supporters of his rival, Imran Khan, on a flight from London to Islamabad recently.
The claim is false. The video is old and unrelated.
Claim
On November 16, a TikTok user shared a 20-second video showing a man arguing on a plane, with Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar seen trying to calm the situation.
The caption read: “Nawaz Sharif has left London for Pakistan. In the plane, passengers protested and raised slogans in support of Imran Khan.”
By the time of writing, the video had been viewed over 296,000 times, shared over 530 times, and liked over 22,600 times.
Similar claims were also shared here, here and here.
Fact
The video is not recent and was recorded in October 2023 when Nawaz Sharif returned to Pakistan after a self-imposed exile. It contains no slogans in support of Imran Khan.
The footage shared online bears the watermark of Samaa Television. A reverse image search led Geo Fact Check to the original footage posted by Samaa TV on October 21, 2023.
The actual video shows journalists protesting onboard after being prevented from approaching Sharif during the flight. One reporter can be heard saying that journalists were being restricted from covering Sharif.
As for the slogans, the video clearly shows they were raised in support of Dar, a senior leader of the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), not Khan.
Murtaza Ali Shah, Geo Television’s correspondent in the United Kingdom, who was on the flight, corroborated these details. Speaking to Geo Fact Check, he confirmed the video was from October 2023. Shah added that the flight carried journalists and PML-N supporters only.
“A journalist was arguing about gaining access to Nawaz Sharif,” Shah explained, providing context for the altercation.
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