Donald Trump Jr tweet: Photo used to compare refugees to Skittles was taken by former refugee

'I don’t support Trump’s politics,' said David Kittos, who fled Cyprus aged six, 'I would never approve the use of this image against refugees'

The image is also statistically inaccurate: to include three killer refugee Skittles, the bowl would have to be big enough to accommodate more than 10 billion total Skittles (Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images)

On Monday, Donald Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr, sought to explain his father’s tough policy on refugees and terror by comparing the issues to rainbow-coloured sweets.

The scion of America’s most soiled real estate brand tweeted an image of a bowl of Skittles, accompanied by an ominous caption. “If I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you three would kill you, would you take a handful?” it asked, concluding: “That’s our Syrian refugee problem.”

As it turns out, Trump Jr’s tweet had its own “refugee problem”: the photographer who took the picture of the bowl of Skittles was once a refugee himself. David Kittos, who posted the image on Flickr six years ago under an “all rights reserved” licence, fled as a child from the Turkish occupation of Cyprus. Now 48 and a British citizen, he lives in Guildford, Surrey.

The picture was used without his permission. “I don’t support [Trump’s] politics and I would never take his money to use it,” Kittos told the BBC. “I would never approve the use of this image against refugees.”

Kittos said he took the photo in 2010 to practice flash techniques. He does not use Twitter and was told about Trump’s controversial tweet by friends on Tuesday. He has considered taking legal action.

“I am Greek-Cypriot by birth and in 1974 I was a refugee because of the Turkish occupation,” he said, explaining his refugee past. “I was six years old. We lived in the area of Cyprus that is now under Turkish military control. We had to leave everything behind overnight. Our property and our possessions.”

In his tweet, Trump Jr asserted: “This image says it all. Let’s end the politically correct agenda that doesn’t put America first.”

In fact, the image doesn’t say it all. The small bowl in Kittos’s photograph would contain approximately 100 Skittles, three of which Trump Jr, 38, suggests could be killers. But a recent report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, found that an American’s odds of dying in a terrorist attack perpetrated by a refugee in any given year are about one in 3.64 billion.

Thus, Philip Bump of the Washington Post calculates, to contain three killer Skittles, the bowl in Trump Jr’s tweet ought to be filled with around 10.93 billion sweets in total.

Without addressing its statistical inaccuracies, Skittles’ parent company Mars Inc also criticised Trump Jr’s underlying comparison. “Skittles are candy. Refugees are people,” the firm said in a statement. “We don't feel it is an appropriate analogy.”