A Twitter account claiming to be owned by the young Sudanese protester dubbed "Karnaka", or Nubian queen, has been exposed as being nothing but a fan-run account.
The account garnered about 50,000 followers since a photo of Alaa Saleh leading protests in Khartoum went viral.
The account has now scrubbed any evidence of claiming to be Alaa's and identifies itself as a being operated by her fans. Its following has dropped to about 36,000.
This is a fake account claiming to be Alaa Salah, the star of the iconic photo that made #SudanUprising go viral. https://t.co/AvX2PN2exe
— Yousra Elbagir (@YousraElbagir) April 12, 2019
People who contacted the account were told that it is run by admirers who wish to hand over the account to Alaa when she wants it.
The image of the 22-year-old engineering student from Khartoum was taken on Monday by another woman, Lana Haroun.
A video shared online shows Ms Saleh performing a graceful dance, a mere hint of a sway to accompany her chanting, which gave heart to the thousands of people staging a sit-in outside the headquarters of the armed forces in the Sudanese capital, in a bid to persuade generals to remove the president, Omar Al Bashir.
Mr Al Bashir was forced out by the military on Thursday, ending three decades in power since he led a 1989 military coup backed by Islamists.
