NotQualified
Member
I took a quick look through the forums and hadn't seen this anywhere. First thread, hope I'm not treading old ground with this.
The claim and pictures were found on a blog claiming to be the "real free Syrian press". I don't know which side of the conflict this puts the blogger one (both sides like to accuse the other of working with, for, or being Jews) it's enough to put the claim itself in serious doubt. However, what caught my attention and kept me from immediately dismissing the claim were 3 pictures that accompanied it:
and
and
Now, as it stands, I do not have enough information on who Simon Elliot is to say that the person in these pictures is him or anyone else. What I can say is that the person in the upper left corner of the first picture IS Baghdadi and that the unidentified person on the right side of that picture does look strikingly similar to Baghdadi (those eyebrows), and that this unidentified person looks like the man in the other two pictures. However, just because the unidentified person looks like him (Baghdadi) doesn't mean it is him, and just because the unidentified man in the first picture looks like the man in the other two pictures doesn't mean that they are the same person.
Because this hinges on people accepting the similarities between these people as them being the same person, I was hoping someone could either prove that the unidentified man is not a Mossad agent named Simon Elliot, or that someone has a strong enough background in facial recognition to say that unidentified man is not Baghdadi sans a beard and turban.
In my opinion this is a weak claim without even going into who Simon Elliot is and whether or not he is a Mossad agent. It relies entirely on people accepting those pictures and the narrative that came with them at face value. Thank you for your effort and time, please let me know if the way I posed this is confusing. It certainly sounds confusing in my head.
The claim and pictures were found on a blog claiming to be the "real free Syrian press". I don't know which side of the conflict this puts the blogger one (both sides like to accuse the other of working with, for, or being Jews) it's enough to put the claim itself in serious doubt. However, what caught my attention and kept me from immediately dismissing the claim were 3 pictures that accompanied it:

and

and

Now, as it stands, I do not have enough information on who Simon Elliot is to say that the person in these pictures is him or anyone else. What I can say is that the person in the upper left corner of the first picture IS Baghdadi and that the unidentified person on the right side of that picture does look strikingly similar to Baghdadi (those eyebrows), and that this unidentified person looks like the man in the other two pictures. However, just because the unidentified person looks like him (Baghdadi) doesn't mean it is him, and just because the unidentified man in the first picture looks like the man in the other two pictures doesn't mean that they are the same person.
Because this hinges on people accepting the similarities between these people as them being the same person, I was hoping someone could either prove that the unidentified man is not a Mossad agent named Simon Elliot, or that someone has a strong enough background in facial recognition to say that unidentified man is not Baghdadi sans a beard and turban.
In my opinion this is a weak claim without even going into who Simon Elliot is and whether or not he is a Mossad agent. It relies entirely on people accepting those pictures and the narrative that came with them at face value. Thank you for your effort and time, please let me know if the way I posed this is confusing. It certainly sounds confusing in my head.