Video doesn’t show the head of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, Movsum Samadov, at the U.S. border

Social media posts are claiming that an Azerbaijani man entered the U.S. from the southern border, but the man shown in the posts isn’t whom they say. 

"Remember this face. Movsum Samadov, who was previosly sentenced to 12 years in prison for terrorism, was filmed walking across the Texas border last week," says a Jan. 23 Facebook post that misspelled "previously" by Muskegon Underground, which calls itself a parody/satire page. But the video had no trace of a joke. Other accounts on Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok made the same claim. 

A Facebook video shows the man saying, "Soon you’re gonna know who I am."

The Facebook and Instagram posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) 

Samadov, the head of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan, was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He was convicted of criminal charges including the preparation of terrorism, possessing illegal weapons and attempting a coup.

Human Rights Watch reported in 2011 that before Samadov was convicted, he was arrested after posting a speech on Youtube denouncing Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s ban on women wearing headscarves in schools and universities. He was released Jan. 19, 2023, after completing his sentence, according to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. 

PolitiFact found that the viral footage of the migrant originated Jan. 20 from an X account with the username @1strespondersmedia, which calls itself a news outlet. The original post says that a migrant who illegally crossed into the U.S. threatened the poster after he simply asked him where he was from, but it never mentions that the man is Samadov. The thread in the post also says that the encounter happened in Sasabe, Arizona.

The Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, which provides information and analyses of terrorist groups, posted on X that Samadov was wrongly identified as a man crossing the border illegally. 

Social media users showed a 2011 picture of Samadov to claim that he is the man in the posts, but more recent images and Youtube videos show him looking older and bearing little resemblance to the man in the social media video.

Samadov told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in a Jan. 24 interview that he is not the man in the posts. (We translated the interview from Azerbaijani to English using Google Translate.)

Samadov said the person in the video didn’t look like him, and pointed out that the man has few similarities with him, except for glasses.

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The image on the left is a screenshot of a Facebook post and the picture on the right is a screenshot from Samadov’s Facebook account.

Samadov also explained in the interview that he is banned from leaving Azerbaijan. He said he has tried twice to visit the U.S. but hasn’t been granted permission. 

We were not able to find the identity of the man in the video, or his country of origin, but a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security told PolitiFact that he is in U.S. custody. 

PolitiFact reached out to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but didn’t get a response. 

We rate the claim that a video shows Samadov coming to the U.S. southern border False. 

PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

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