What was claimed
A photo shows Fidel Castro holding a baby Justin Trudeau.
Our verdict
The baby in the picture is Michel Trudeau, the PM’s late brother. The photo was taken on 1976 trip to Cuba, when Justin Trudeau would have been four.
This picture does not show Fidel Castro holding Justin Trudeau as a baby
22 March 2019
A Facebook post claiming to show a picture of Fidel Castro holding an infant Justin Trudeau, actually shows the Cuban leader holding the Canadian prime minister’s late brother, Michel.
Justin Trudeau’s father, Pierre, was also Canadian prime minister, and according to his son “was very proud to call [Fidel Castro] a friend”.
The photo is from a Pierre Trudeau’s state visit to Cuba in January 1976, when Michel was less than a year old. Justin Trudeau would have been four at the time.
A picture in colour, from the same trip, shows Pierre, his wife Margaret, and baby Michel Trudeau with Fidel Castro. All the evidence we’ve seen suggests they were the only three members of the family who visited Cuba in 1976, and that Justin (as well as his brother Sasha, who was two at the time) did not make the trip.
When Fidel Castro died in 2016, Justin Trudeau said he had only “had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away” in the year 2000.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the picture doesn’t show what it says it does.