Does a video on social media show former President Barack Obama in a GITMO jail cell after being arrested in 2019? No, that's not true: It's authentic video, but it was taken in 2013 when Obama visited the jail cell where former South African president and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was held for 18 years. There is no evidence that Obama was ever arrested nor jailed at the U.S. Navy's Guantanamo Bay detention camp nicknamed GITMO.
The statement appeared in an August 25, 2024 post on X (archived here). The post's caption read:
THIS IS A VIDEO OF BARACK OBAMA WHEN HE ENTERED GITMO JAIL ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2019 WHEN HE WAS ARRESTED
This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Aug 26 13:56:10 2024 UTC)
The post included a video clip of Obama looking around a small enclosed space, with bars on the window visible in the background and a prison cell door made of metal bars.
A reverse image search (archived here) of a still from the video shows that it was from news coverage of Obama's 2013 visit to Mandela's former jail cell. One example of that news coverage is the same video from the X post in a 2013 report on The Guardian's YouTube channel under the title "Barack Obama 'humbled' by visit to Nelson Mandela's Robben Island jail."
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google News, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim (archived here).
Lead Stories contacted Obama's press team and will update this article when a response is received.
More Lead Stories fact checks on claims related to Barack Obama are here.
