Was the image of a truck packed with migrants linked to the mass entry into Ceuta?

A controversial image in a police report on the mass entry of migrants into Ceuta shows dozens of young men packed into a rubbish truck, but fact-checkers located the scene far from the Spanish enclave.

David Puente, a verifier with open.online, said the truck was filmed on the N2 road between Tangier and Tetouan. The location is about an hour and 15 minutes by car from Ceuta, or roughly 11 hours on foot. The Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie intercepted the vehicle.

According to Newtral, the oldest records of the video date to July 30, one day before the mass entry into Ceuta. However, no verifier has been able to establish whether the truck was traveling toward Ceuta before it was stopped. That uncertainty has cast doubt on the image's relevance to the events examined by investigators.

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This is about a police report being based on photos from videos circulating on social networks, some of which even carry community notes about their falsity.

Transport Minister Óscar Puente questioned some of the images in the police report after the verification work. He argued on social media that a police report should not rely on videos circulating online when users had already flagged some as false. He specifically cited the truck image, saying its location appeared to have little connection with the events under investigation.

The report has also intensified a dispute between the government and the judiciary. National Court judge María Tardón, who commissioned the report from the National Immigration and Borders Center, had barred agents from informing their superiors. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska wrote to the president of the General Council of the Judiciary, who called for respect for judicial independence. The National Court's governing body also defended the judge.

Numerous videos circulated online on the day of the Ceuta border assault that did not depict events in the area. Verificat identified material from a religious festival in Turkey, the 2021 Ceuta crisis and other unrelated footage.

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This user geolocates the image used by the police in its report 11 hours on foot from Ceuta. In other words, it does not seem to have the slightest connection with the events under investigation.