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In the podcast “Califato” (caliphate), the Canadian citizen Shehroze Chaudry, a key figure in the program, says that in 2016 he went to Syria and personally carried out two executions for the Islamic State. He is also said to have witnessed other brutal abuses.
The podcast provoked strong reactions in the Canadian Parliament, where conservative opposition politicians expressed outrage and frustration that Chaudry lived like a free man in Ontario after counting the executions.
War name
In the podcast, which in 2018 won the Peabody Television and Radio Award, Chaudry says that as a member of ISIS he took the name of Private Abu Huzayfah.
On Friday, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Dean Baquet, had to admit that this person was likely a fraud who made up most, if not all, of what he told the New York Times.
The newspaper launched an investigation into the shows in 2018 after Canadian authorities accused Chaudry of being behind a hoax.
Editor-in-chief Baquet described as an “institutional error” in the newspaper that the editorial board, including himself, had not followed the allegations more closely.
He was tricked
Chaudry’s story was featured by the worthy New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi in a twelve-episode podcast series. Callimachi has written a lot about IS, but relied too heavily on fictitious and exaggerated stories in this series, the editor-in-chief admits.
The podcast is not taken off the air, but receives a supplement that explains what the newspaper has revealed. Callimachi is removed from the field and assigned to other duties. “Caliphate” was seen as pioneering a lucrative new platform for the newspaper and in 2018 was one of the most sought after on Apple’s podcast list.
But the red warning flags were never far away. Back in 2017, Chaudry told Canadian broadcaster CBC that he had incorrectly told the New York Times that he had participated in abuses.
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