At the end of May 2024, information about the death of student Samir Hamdawi in France began to spread on social networks. It was alleged that he was detained during the protests and beaten at the police station, after which he allegedly died. We figured out whether this information is true.
On May 30, posts appeared in Telegram channels talking about the death of a student from Algeria. It was reported that he was arrested during a rally in support of Palestine, which took place on May 7 in front of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. Then, according to bloggers, the young man spent a day in the police and returned beaten. He soon died, however, as reported with reference to the student’s relatives, law enforcement agencies refused to accept the statement of violent death. The social media posts were accompanied by a video message from Hamdawi's brother and a photo of a small street memorial. Telegram channels, in particular, wrote about the beating and death of the student “Observer"(196,000 views at the time of writing the analysis), "Putin on Telegram" (150,000) and "Voice of Mordor"(138,000).
At the beginning of May, the French police several times accelerated pro-Palestinian tent camps on and near the Sciences Po Institute. On May 7, after another crackdown the day before, demonstrators again occupied Rue Saint-Guillaume near the university. For resisting the police there were arrested two people, at the same time dozens of protesters at the Sorbonne were detained. But the French media did not write about the death of one of the students.
Fact checkers from the program Les Observateurs France 24 TV channel contacted the Paris prosecutor's office, where they were told that a man named Samir Hamdawi was not prosecuted or detained on May 7. Journalists also contacted students at the Institute of Political Studies, including those who participated in the protests, and they also could neither remember the name nor identify the person in the photo. Finally, Les Observateurs asked lawyer Louise Lamour, who defends the interests of the protesting students, about the alleged incident, and she replied that she did not have any information about Hamdawi.
The earliest report of the student's death was a YouTube video in which a man claiming to be Samir's brother told the story of his supposed death. Account already deleted along with the video, but screenshot saved in the archive. On May 31, when the video was archived and reports of Hamdawi's death circulated on social media, the channel Justice pour Samir Hamdaoui had 18 subscribers.
In the video, a young man who calls himself the brother of Samir Hamdawi talks in detail about the student’s detention and beating at the police station of the 7th arrondissement of Paris. According to the man, Samir died two days later, and doctors reported that he died of heart failure. It was not possible to identify the brother using available facial recognition services. Les Observateurs suggests that the video could have been created using artificial intelligence.
It was also not possible to determine who is actually depicted in the photograph posted on the makeshift memorial. The photo, however, was actually taken near from the Institute of Political Studies, at the intersection of Grenelle and Saint-Guillaume streets.
But no other photographs of this memorial could be found on the Internet, nor any mention of it, which is surprising, given the tense situation in the university districts of Paris in May.
The spread of the story about the Algerian student began with a publication on the MaliJet website, where it was retold video of Hamdawi's brother. This article appeared on May 28, specifically for her refer pro-Kremlin Telegram channels. A photograph of the memorial also appeared in it for the first time. However, the author calls the student either Samir or Ahmed. On May 30, the text was reprinted without changes by the site Media alternatif, which became the source of the news spread on French social networks.
MaliJet is a Malian pro-government publication. It mentioned in 2022 in a report by the French Institute for Strategic Studies of the Military School as a media outlet, which collaborated with RIA FAN and other media owned by the founder of the Wagner PMC, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Media alternatif website was registered in Cyprus on May 24, 2024, that is, less than a week before the publication of the article about Samir Hamdawi. The site is currently unavailable, but there are others in the web archive. publications - For example, fake about the wife of the President of Ukraine Elena Zelenskaya and child trafficking.
Thus, the story about a protesting Parisian student who died after being beaten by police has not been confirmed. Neither the Parisian law enforcement agencies nor the Institute of Political Studies know about this case. The video with the address of this student’s brother, which formed the basis of the story, was probably created by artificial intelligence, and the photograph of the memorial not far from the university remained the only one. Finally, pro-Russian websites and pro-Kremlin Telegram channels were disseminating this news.
Cover photo: social networks / collage “Verified”
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