Back to Africa Check

Daughter of Kenya’s deputy president inspecting weapons with arms deal accused? No, photo doctored

Rashid Echesa, Kenya’s former sports minister, was arrested on 13 February 2020 and charged for an alleged fake KSh40 billion arms tender, according to a Daily Nation report.

On 17 February an image that seems to show Echesa with June Ruto, the daughter of Kenya’s deputy president William Ruto, was posted on Facebook

The two are standing behind a drone, an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The image is captioned: “RUTO CANT ESCAPE THIS TIME. June Ruto and Rashid Echesa inspecting the drones in Poland. You ain't seen nothing yet., NEXT IT'S Her FATHER.”

It was also shared on the website Kenyan Report, which calls itself the “#1 Diaspora Media House”, and on Kenyan Report’s Facebook page. The image also appears on a popular Kenyan political group on Facebook.

Echesa was released on bail on 17 February. But revelations that he visited the Office of the Deputy President have drawn Ruto and his daughter into the scandal. Ruto has dismissed the reports.

There have been many media reports that June Ruto works for the foreign affairs ministry as an envoy to Poland, although her exact position is unclear.

But does the image really show June Ruto inspecting weapons with Echesa? We checked.



Pair not in original photo


Africa Check used an online application to flip the image horizontally. We then did a reverse image search. This quickly led to the original photo, on a Polish website. It shows a Polish-made drone, the “Warmate 2”, which is manufactured by a Polish company, the WB Group

It was in a slideshow of photos from the 26th MSPO International Defence Industry Exhibition, held in Kielce, Poland, in 2018. 

Echesa and Ruto are not in the original photo.

We looked through the photos on Echesa’s Facebook page and found a similar photo of the former minister, posted on 29 August 2018. Echesa’s posture and facial expression in both photos match exactly. His shirt is blue, not white, but this could easily be changed using photo manipulation software. 

The background suggests the photo was taken at the minister’s office in Nairobi when he was still in office, and not in Kielce. – Dancan Bwire




 

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.