The conspiracist website Real Raw News makes up false stories about public figures it dislikes being executed at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay. Its latest subject is the World Health Organization’s Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu.
MARY ALEXANDER • 12 MARCH 2024
The US Navy executed Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, a top World Health Organization (WHO) official and former head of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), at Guantanamo Bay on 3 February 2024.
This absurdly false claim has been circulating online in South Africa and elsewhere since 10 February.*
Ihekweazu, an epidemiologist, heads the health emergency intelligence and surveillance systems division at the WHO headquarters in Geneva.
During his time at the NCDC he led Nigeria’s response to the Covid pandemic. His book about the experience, An Imperfect Storm, is due to be published later in 2024.
The claim that he was executed at Guantanamo Bay comes from a story headlined “JAG hangs WHO despot”, published on the disinformation website Real Raw News on 10 February.
It can also be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Guantanamo Bay, known as Gitmo, is a US Navy base and detention centre on the coast of Cuba in the Caribbean. JAG or the Judge Advocate General’s Corps is the legal arm of the US Navy.
The story says “Gitmo sources” told Real Raw News that JAG hanged Ihekweazu on 3 February after he had “surreptitiously entered the United States to discuss enacting fresh shelter-in-place and vaccine mandates with the CDC’s nefarious Rapid Response Team”.
The US Centers for Disease Control’s Global Rapid Response Team tackles public health emergencies such as cholera, Covid, dengue, Ebola, famine and natural disasters across the world.
The Real Raw News story reads like bad fiction. Here’s one bit:
Atop the platform, the hangman slipped the noose around Ihekweazu’s neck and checked the tautness. Satisfied, he stepped backward, his hand hovering an inch from the button that, when pushed, would end Ihekweazu’s life.
But none of this happened.
Ihekweazu joins other public figures not hanged at Gitmo
Guantanamo Bay has a decades-long reputation for illegal detention, torture and other human rights abuses.
If the US Navy had executed a top WHO official there it would have made headlines across the world. It hasn’t.
And Ihekweazu has been publicly active long after his supposed death on 3 February. He has, for example, posted dozens of times on his official X/Twitter account @Chikwe_I, including photos of himself at public events – here, here and here.
On 13 February he delivered the opening remarks at the launch of the first global peer review of the WHO’s Universal Health and Preparedness Review.
And in early March he wrote an obituary for Nigeria’s former Access Bank CEO Herbert Wigwe, who died in a helicopter crash in the US on 9 February. It was published by This Day and Nigeria Health Watch.
The claim is false.
It’s not the first time Real Raw News has made up a story about a public figure being hanged at Guantanamo Bay.
Other headlines on the site include “Eric Holder Hanged at GITMO”, “Dick Cheney Hanged at GITMO”, “Dr. Francis Collins Hanged at GITMO”, “John Brennan Hanged at GITMO” and “Bill Gates Hanged at GITMO Ahead of Schedule”.
* Some Facebook and Instagram users may have deleted their posts after Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program rated their claims as untrue.
Published by Africa Check on 14 March 2024