Investigators concluded they couldn't be sure he'd ever been in Syria and almost certainly didn't commit the atrocities he'd claimed. Supposed evidence he offered to back up his story, including photos from Syria, were gathered from other sources. The Times concluded he was a “fabulist” who concocted stories as an escape from his mundane life in a Toronto suburb or living with grandparents in Pakistan. “All the evidence that he presented that he went to Syria was either ripped from somewhere else, was inconclusive or just didn't hold up,” Mark Mazzetti, who led the Times' investigative team on Chaudhry, said in the podcast. But Baquet likened it to confirmation bias, of wanting to believe what seemed like a great story.

Source: Daily Sun December 18, 2020 22:07 UTC