WHAT WAS CLAIMED
Images show Dezi Freeman after his arrest by police.
OUR VERDICT
False. The images are AI-generated.
AAP FACTCHECK - Australia's most wanted fugitive Dezi Freeman has not been arrested by police, despite claims spreading on social media.
Victoria Police say they strongly believe the 56-year-old is dead, nearly six months after he allegedly shot two police officers dead in northeast Victoria.
Neal Thompson and Vadim de Waart-Hottart were part of a police team trying to serve a warrant at Freeman's home in the small town of Porepunkah when they were shot in late August.
Several Vietnamese-run Facebook pages have posted AI-generated images of Freeman in a bid to push fake stories about his supposed arrest.
The pages urge users to click links to external websites to find out more.
One Facebook post from a page called BritView Pulse features a mugshot of Freeman after his purported capture by police, standing in front of a measurement wall and wearing an orange jumpsuit.
"AFTER 165 DAYS ON THE RUN… IT'S OVER," the post reads.
"Dezi Freeman was arrested just 15 minutes ago, after police tracked down the place where he had been hiding under an elaborate disguise."
However, it is not standard practice for Victorian police or prisons to dress detainees in orange jumpsuits.
Victoria Police mugshots show those arrested wearing their own clothes.
Once transferred to prison, male inmates in the state are typically issued with green uniforms.
The measurement numbers on the wall behind Freeman are jumbled - another sign of AI generation.
A second Vietnamese-run Facebook page, Win Hair, posted a different mugshot of Freeman with similar visual errors, indicating it's also synthetic.
Both Facebook posts also feature a set of three images showing several police officers purportedly finding and arresting the fugitive.
However, these images do not show Freeman.
A Google reverse image search shows the three images are screengrabs from footage of Aboriginal man Noel Henry being restrained and repeatedly struck by police officers in South Australia in 2020.
The clip was widely reported by media outlets, including ABC News.
Other posts include photographs published by credible media outlets to lend legitimacy to false claims that Freeman was taken into custody.
One features several images from a Seven News report about a five-day manhunt for Freeman, which police concluded without success in early February.
The post includes a photo of Detective Inspector Adam Tilley, an image of Freeman, and a photograph showing police searching for him.
Presented out of context, the images falsely imply that police had located or arrested Freeman and that Det Insp Tilley made a statement supporting this.
In reality, Det Tilley told Seven News that "no proof of life" had been found.
Police said they were still open to other possibilities, including that Freeman may have escaped the area or was being harboured by other people.
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