A fake story about a non-existent “law expert” defending President Rodrigo Duterte from pending prosecution by the International Criminal Court has resurfaced, a little over a month after it was disproven in a Vera Files Fact Check.
The story is a Feb. 12 report by website asensopinoy.info which Facebook had detected receiving new activity this July. It bore the headline: “Law Expert To ICC: You Cannot Prosecute A President With Very High Approval Ratings In His Country.”
Versions of the story bearing the same claim – a “Dr. Alfred Sanders” saying in an international conference Duterte may not be probed by the ICC because of his “high approval rating” – was published earlier in February by philrepublicnews.com and globalnews.favradio.fm in June last year.
Fact checks by Vera Files last June 22 and website Meme Buster in June 2017 reveal the story fabricates information on the following accounts:
*No such “Dr. Alfred Sanders” works at the College of Law of the United Kingdom’s Oxford University;
*The photo the website uses of Sanders is actually of German politician Martin Schulz;
*The website does not state the name of the “international legal forum” where Sanders supposedly made the claim;
*The website flip-flops on the figures it uses about Duterte’s approval rating, once saying 75%, on other times 78% — Pulse Asia Research Inc.’s findings in its April 2017 survey is actually 78%;
*The book the website claims Sanders wrote, The Rise of American Democracy, was actually written by Sean Wilentz and bore the more complete title, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.
No Alfred Sanders had been awarded Knight Grand Cross, nor given The Order of the Bath, which are the highest orders of knighthood that may be given to citizens of the united Kingdom. (See: VERA FILES FACT CHECK: Debunked FAKE NEWS on opinion of ‘legal expert’ about ICC back on social media <verafiles.org/articles/vera-files-fact-check-debunked-fake-news-opinion-legal-exper>)
Asensopinoy.info’s fake news was revived the same month human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch renewed its call for a probe by the ICC and United Nations into extrajudicial killings linked to Duterte’s war on drugs. The ICC announced in February the start of a preliminary examination into the matter.
The fake recycled story could have reached more than 45,000 people, traffic from social media largely generated by the page Pres. Duterte Supporters. Asensopinoy.info was created in October 2017.
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