no students were “killed by French police”, contrary to what pro-Russian accounts claim

Internet users claim, with supporting photos and articles, that a student of Algerian origin was killed, beaten by police officers after a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Paris. Information shared by accounts from the pro-Russian sphere, denied by the prosecution.

Is this a new example of disinformation coming from Russia? In recent days, Internet users have been sharing a photo of a young man, posed in the middle of some flowers, as a tribute. Others relay an article. They claim that a 21-year-old Algerian student, Samir Hamdaoui, was killed, a few days after being taken into police custody in Paris, following a pro-Palestinian demonstration on May 7. He was allegedly beaten by police officers. The information was allegedly hidden for several weeks and only revealed at the end of May. These messages are viewed more than a million times, and shared in English, Arabic and even Spanish. Was an Algerian student really killed after a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Paris?

It’s wrong. The Paris prosecutor’s office, contacted by franceinfo, ensures that no Samir Hamdaoui was placed in police custody on May 7. There was also no registration of suspicious deaths around this date, nor any report to the IGPN.

When we go back through the thread of messages on social networks, Internet users almost all refer to an article published on May 28 on the “alternative media” site. An article titled: “A student, who took part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration, died after being beaten in a police station in France.” We find on the front page the photo of the pseudo-victim, which is circulating online. When reading the article, we notice that the syntax is not always correct and that the victim, called “Samir” throughout the text, is renamed “Ahmed” in the middle of the paper. The first elements that call out. Furthermore, the website was created on May 24, 2024, just a few days before the article was published. While browsing the site, we notice the publication of other false information.

But above all, a video is attached to the article on Samir Hamdaoui. This is the pseudo-testimony of the victim’s brother. “My brother Samir died, he was killed by the cops […] I ask all Muslims to make public what the cops did with my brother”, we can hear, in a video of approximately three minutes, viewed more than 13,000 times. The voice is a bit robotic. The one presented as the victim’s brother barely blinks an eye. His face is still. Everything suggests an image generated by artificial intelligence. The photo of the victim, which is circulating on social networks, also seems to be generated by AI, as analyzed by Victor Baait, a specialist in online disinformation and artificial intelligence.

Who shares this type of misinformation? There are Internet users who are fooled and who relay the information, but also accounts who do it voluntarily. In this specific case, several pro-Russian accounts shared the message. One of the first to do so was the Aussie Cossack account, which almost exclusively publishes anti-Ukrainian content. A Telegram account, RRN, also shared the false information. This account has already been singled out by Viginimum, the vigilance and protection service against foreign digital interference, in June 2023. Finally, the “alternative media” site, which published the article, also shares false information against Ukrainian power, in particular an article accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Wife’s Foundation of kidnapping children and selling them to pedophiles. Elements which suggest a new foreign interference, coming from Russia.