Was a man named Sam Kazemi arrested by Nairobi police in Kenya for selling human meat in a butchery with the bizarre name "Biological Resource Center"? No, that's not true: a fake news website which was launched only a few days ago used an old Reuters story to cobble together a fake news report, it is not real.
The story originated from an article published by The African Daily on November 5, 2018 titled "Nairobi Man Caught Red-handed Selling Human meat in a butchery - The African Daily" (archived here) which opened:
NAIROBI - Sam Kazemi stood over the old man's corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel and a motorized saw designed to cut drywall and pipe.
On a busy day, Kazemi would at least harvest body parts from five or six people who had donated their bodies to science.
On this day in November 2018, the corpse before Kazemi typified the donors who gave their remains to his employer, Biological Resource Center.
The man who brought the meat claimed to be a retired factory worker. Police found out later that the crime has never happened in the city before.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail, so it looked like a real news story at first glance:
Nairobi Man Caught Red-handed Selling Human meat in a butchery - The African Daily
Spread the love NAIROBI - Sam Kazemi stood over the old man's corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel and a motorized saw designed to cut drywall and pipe. On a busy day, Kazemi would at [...]
But in December 2017 Reuters ran a series of investigative articles on the trade in human body parts and organs for scientific research in the U.S. Here is one of those articles, part seven in the series:
Inside a business where human bodies were butchered, packaged and sold
For a decade, Arizona-based Biological Resource Center persuaded dying Americans to donate their bodies to science. Here's what happened to thousands of donors
That story opened:
PHOENIX - Sam Kazemi stood over the old man's corpse. Nearby lay pliers, a scalpel and a motorized saw designed to cut drywall and pipe.
On a busy day, Kazemi might harvest body parts from five or six people who had donated their bodies to science. On this day in November 2013, the corpse before Kazemi typified the donors who gave their remains to his employer, Biological Resource Center.
The man was a retired factory worker with a ninth-grade education. He had lived with his wife in a mobile home in Mohave Valley, Arizona, and had died six days earlier, aged 75. His name was Conrad Patrick.
But after he died and his body was donated, Patrick became a commodity, known by the company's initials and a number: BRC13112103.
So not only was there no "meat" sold in a "butchery", it didn't even happen in Africa.
The website The African Daily was only registered three days ago according to WHOIS records:
Domain Information
Domain:
afrikan-daily.com
Registrar:
Wild West Domains, LLC
Registered On:
2018-11-02
Expires On:
2019-11-02
Updated On:
2018-11-02
It appears to be using the same Google Adsense account ("ca-pub-8079706902575218") as citizensdailyupdates.com, another notoriously unreliable website. Both sites seem to be promoting their stories on the same Facebook pages, for example this one pretending to be from CNN:
And this one pretending to be a fan page for a Kenyan politician:
Don't trust these sites if you want reliable news!
