Was 26-year old Abdullah al-Rashidi from Jizan in Saudi Arabia sentenced to 1,000 lashes for perfroming oral sex on a camel owned by his boss? No, that's not true: the story was made up by a Canadian entertainment website that makes a living by publishing fictional stories often involving weird crimes, bizarre sex acts or strange accidents. It is not real.
The story originated from an article published on October 15, 2017 titled "Saudi man sentenced to 1,000 lashes for performing oral sex on a camel" (archived here) which opened:
Jizan | A 26-year-old Saudi Arabian man has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and two months in jail after he allegedly performed oral sex on one of his employer's camels, reports the Riyadh Herald this week.
Abdullah al-Rashidi, 26, was tending to the herd of camels when he was caught performing a fellatio on one of the animals before local authorities were called in and proceeded to his arrest.
Al-Rashidi's employer first hesitated before calling the police but said he could not tolerate such an act of perversion before God and that his employee's actions needed to be punished.
Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:
Saudi man sentenced to 1,000 lashes for performing oral sex on a camel
Jizan | A 26-year-old Saudi Arabian man has been sentenced to 1,000 lashes and two months in jail after he allegedly performed oral sex on one of his employer's camels, reports the Riyadh Herald this week. Abdullah al-Rashidi, 26, was tending to the herd of camels when he was caught performing a fe
The article recently went viral again after it was reposted to some Facebook groups and pages.
But the man pictured with the article is actually terrorist Yasin Bhatkal who operated in India in 2012:
Bhatkal's bomb making lab in Goa beach
The National Investigation Agency recovered bomb-making equipment from a house near a beach at Anjuna village in the Goa state, where Yasin Bhatkal, the alleged co-founder of banned terror group Indian Mujahideen, Bhatkal set up Bomb making lab in Goa, Terrorist Bhatkal Bomb Making lab in Goa beach
More news about him:
Top IM operative Bhatkal 'planned Hyderabad blast from Nepal'
It has been revealed that top Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative Yasin Bhatkal allegedly planned last year's Hyderabad bomb blasts while hiding in Pokhra, Nepal, without disclosing his identity even to the IM terrorists executing the attack.
In addition to that there is no real news publication named "Riyadh Herald" as far as we were able to ascertain.
The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:
World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.
It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.
Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.
NewsGuard, a company that uses trained journalist to rank the reliability of websites, describes worldnewsdailyreport.com as:
A website that publishes hoaxes and made-up stories that are often widely shared and mistaken for news.
According to NewsGuard the site does not maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability. Read their full assessment here.
We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:
- Fake News: Coast Guard Employee Did NOT Tell Cops She Was Forced Into Prostitution By Government Shutdown
- Fake News: Chinese Lunar Rover Finds No Evidence of American Moon Landings (Exactly As Expected...)
- Fake News: United Airlines Pilot and Copilot NOT Fired, Did NOT Have Loud Sex During Flight
- Fake News: American Tourist NOT Arrested in Costa Rica For Having Sex With Endangered Sea Turtles
- Fake News: Man Did NOT Get Plastic Surgery And Name Change to Date Ex-girlfriend After Restraining Order