A recent story has been making the rounds, of a 15-year jail term and $135,000 fine for anyone seen wearing a Qatar Airways-sponsored FC Barcelona jersey.
However, this news article has been revealed to be a complete hoax based on a variety of reasons.
First off, it is well known that Qatar Airways is no longer the shirt sponsors of the Catalans since the rights have moved to Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten.
Also, various popular media outlets like the Daily Mirror, The Sun and Daily Mail carried the story but a simple Google search will reveal that there is not a single credible source to support this claim.
On further inspection, one would notice that the origin of the story was a tweet by an Arabic speaker, who seems to be Qatari, by the name of Raed Al-Emadi. Quoting an unknown, unverified Twitter user who on his own handle says his account is “fictitious” and “any similarities with real life were an unintended coincidence”, is enough to ring alarm bells and prove the source to be nowhere near credible.
Also, the basis for the story was found to be a tweet containing what may be a photo-shopped image of a shop window — in what the tweet alleges is in an undisclosed Gulf country — carrying an FC Barcelona poster with a censored Qatar logo.
Additionally, the story was published on the Pan-Arabia Enquirer, which is a satire website known to be the Middle Eastern equivalent of The Onion.
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