Duped?

While I can appreciate a person's desire to draw attention to injustice and tragedy, doing so by misleading folks isn't the way to go about it.

This past Tuesday I posted about an outspoken Syrian blogger named Amina who had recently been abducted by government security forces. Fortunately (or unfortunately depending on your perspective) all is not what it appears to be.

The good news is that hopefully a Syrian blogger wasn't actually abducted. The bad news is that it appears Amina may be a complete hoax.

From NPR...

But just as Amina's story got out, her authenticity began to crumble. Along with a profile of Amina, The Guardian posted a picture they say was given to them by Amina, only to find it was really a picture of Jelena Lecic, a Londoner who said she had "never met Amina. I am not friends with her."

We sifted through biographical details Amina posted throughout her "Gay Girl In Damascus" blog and could not corroborate them using public records. We could not find public records that corresponded with whom she said her parents were or records that correspond to the person who claimed to be her cousin. The U.S. State Department told us the same thing — that they had not been able to verify what Amina wrote about in her blog.

Another good article from The Guardian on this mystery.

6/18 Update: So "Amina" finally came clean. She is a he and he's not even from Syria. He's Tom MacMaster from Georgia.

While his motive may have been pure, his execution sucked.