ICYMI

This viral photo falsely claims to show an IS fighter posing as a refugee
bbc.com

The picture, shared more than 70,000 times on just one Facebook account in recent days, was also spreading on Twitter, and attracted several thousand comments. The prospect of Islamic State (IS) fighters or other militants using the chaos of the current migrant crisis to sneak into European countries has been raised by EU officials and others. And IS operatives have bragged that they are sending militants across the Mediterranean via routes commonly used by people smugglers - although such claims are extremely difficult to verify.

But if there are IS fighters posing as asylum seekers, this man is not one of them. In fact, for an asylum seeker, his identity is unusually well documented. His name is Laith Al Saleh, and last month he was the subject of a profile by the Associated Press news agency. He says that he was a Free Syrian Army commander, and that before the civil war he worked as a plasterer in his home city of Aleppo.