THE PSNI HAS said it has received a “number of reports” of a person dressed in a uniform made to resemble Hamas after stating yesterday that an image of the costume on social media appeared to be fake.

In a statement, Chief Superintendent Nigel Goddard said the PSNI has “received a number of reports of a person dressed in a uniform” in Derry city centre “during the Halloween festival”.

“We are also aware of additional images circulating on social. Equiries are ongoing,” he said.

An image of a ‘gunman’ in central Derry was shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media, often with the word “Hamas” superimposed over the photo, and several news outlets reported that the image was purportedly taken during Halloween.

Yesterday, the PSNI said it had not received any reports of people seeing the individual dressed in that manner in the location shown in the photo, nor had it found any other photos of them online.

“At this time, and while I remain open-minded, with the checks we have conducted, with no other sightings reported to us from members of the public, or from police officers on duty reporting seeing this person, I believe this is a fake image,” Goddard said yesterday.

An initial analysis of the image was undertaken by The Journal using an “enhanced toolkit to detect image forgeries” provided by InVID, an EU-funded project to create ways to detect manipulated media. No obvious signs of manipulation were found. 

A Visuals Editor with the Belfast Telegraph criticised the PSNI’s statement, saying that they had received a second image of the costumed man taken near the first photo.

“Both images have absolutely no anomalies and full shadow detail,” Kevin Scott wrote on Twitter/X. 

UK Law forbids people from wearing clothing “in such a way or in such a circumstance to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”. Hamas is one such proscribed organisation.

Additional reporting by Shane Raymond