Claim: Ghanaian migrants in Germany jump from a moving bus to escape deportation

Source: Viral claim

Verdict: FALSE

Researched by Sedem Kwasigah

A viral video showing a group of men jumping through a broken window of a moving bus and dashing across a road is being portrayed online as showing some Ghanaian migrants in Germany escaping deportation.

The video has been shared across social media platforms including X / Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok.

“Ghanaians in Germany jumping from the bus which was transporting them to (the) airport for deportation,” was how some social media users described the video online.

Other social media users posted the video and captioned it: “Footage showing an alleged scene of some Africans in Germany jumping from a bus which was transporting them to the airport for deportation.”

The video has garnered over 22 million views on Facebook and 630,000 views on Twitter.

This fact-check report seeks to verify:

  1. Whether the video indeed shows some Ghanaian migrants in Germany running from deportation

 

Fact-Check

To fact-check this claim, FactSpace first observed the environment where the video was captured and identified a black Volkswagen with a yellow licence plate.

A snapshot of the viral video

The team compared the licence plate captured in the video with some German number plates online and found some inconsistencies (verify here).

Subsequently, an email was sent to Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, the agency responsible for vehicular transport registration in Germany.

In response to our email,  Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt shared a document indicating all German licence plates have a white background with black lettering and that the car in the viral video is not from Germany.

Our research later showed the number plate had some similarities with registered number plates in Algeria, a North African country.

FactSpace reached out to Fatabyyano, an independent fact-checking organization in Algeria to help in assessing the viral video and another version of the video filmed from a different angle was found on YouTube.

According to Fatabyyano, a review of the video showed:

  1. The person who is heard speaking in the video was alleging that the group of men jumping through the window were “illegal immigrants” in Algeria.

 

  1. In the first scene of the video, they noticed some characters and a date on a building in the video, AADL 2021.
A screenshot of the viral video

AADL is the Algerian National Agency for Housing Improvement and Development and is undertaking a rent–purchase housing project to produce more than 1.2 million affordable housing units for Algerian citizens.

Therefore, the viral video was not captured in Germany as being portrayed online. Furthermore, there is no evidence to prove that the people seen in the video are Ghanaians.

 

Verdict

So, the claim that the viral video shows Ghanaian migrants in Germany escaping deportation is FALSE.