The 'fake news' story about a French Muslim youth 'beaten up for celebrating Christmas'

ItIt is the story of a fight between youths that, within the space of a few hours, became a symbol of the 'Islamist separatism' that supposedly threatens France. At 8pm on Saturday December 26th 2020 the French news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) put out a story with a very clear headline: “Muslim attacked for cerebrating Christmas and because he is the son of police officers”. Much of the media, both nationally and abroad, subsequently picked up the story, including Mediapart in our automated news in brief section.

Mediapart has since tried to trace the origins of a story which, thanks to the anger of the victim's mother, a police officer, became a major news item. It sparked lots of reaction on social media and on television and even attracted a reaction from the interior minister Gérald Darmanin.

The story began on Christmas Day. At around 3pm that day 20-year-old 'Nadir' – not his real name – was eating with his family at their home in Belfort in eastern France. Like many young people of his age he captured the moment on his 'Stories' feed in Snapchat, which is visible to all of a person's contacts for 24 hours. According to the local newspaper Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace (DNA) the photo showed “oysters and prawns”.

'Hichem' – not his real name – reacted to the post. Aged two years younger than Nadir, the two youths knew each other having attended the same primary school, and were still in touch. Hichem in effect asked Nadir if he was celebrating Christmas. Then, as tensions grew, and in circumstances which remain unclear, the two young men started to insult each other.

“I'm going to fuck your dirty white lousy whore of a mother. I'm gonna show you what a real rebeu [editor's note, slang name for a European-born child of North African immigrants] is you little bastard,” wrote Hichem.

“Think you're forgetting who I am. But we'll see if you're happy to say that face to face, like a man,” replied Nadir.

“But who do you think you are you little son of a whore, you're the son of a hnouch [North African slang for a police officer] but other than that who are you, hey baby I'm gonna fuck your mother, the whore, you'll see,” responded Hichem.

They ended up arranging to meet. Nadir left his family's home in a suburb of Belfort and went to a car park at Terrasses-du-Mont in the town, a stone's throw from where Hichem lived. According to the prosecutor's office in Belfort, Nadir was accompanied by “two, even three people” while Hichem was waiting for him with two of his brothers (one aged 18 like him and another aged 20) and a fourth person.

Prosecutors say that there then followed a “brief exchange” between the two groups before a fight in which Nadir found himself on the ground as the first blows were struck. During the fight he was hit again and was bleeding from his nose and his back, but he was able to get back to his car, return home and then report the incident to the police station in Belfort. He was later officially signed off work for four days. That same evening Hichem went to the police station where he was placed in custody.

Nadir's mother, Ilham Friedrich, is a police sergeant in the nearby city of Mulhouse. She is also a representative for the police trade union Unsa-Police. And it was from the police station in Mulhouse that the press first learnt about the story. Alain Cheval, a news reporter at the DNA newspaper, was the first to get it. One of his sources in Mulhouse told him about the case. The reporter then called the mother – police sergeant Ilham Friedrich - who gave him more details. Later that Boxing Day afternoon he received a message from a contact at the local branch of the Unsa-Police union with a summary of the story entitled “Beaten up for having celebrated Christmas and being a cop's son”.

Alain Cheval's article was published at 5.20pm that day and the headline ran 'Beaten up for having celebrated Christmas and being the son of police officers' - Nadir's father is also a police officer. Alain Cheval wrote that it was Hichem who had set up the meeting with Nadir and that he had attacked him because he was “shocked” to see him “celebrating Christmas when he is a Muslim”. In particular the journalist wrote “this acquaintance and four other individuals” had been waiting for Nadir and that the group had then “beaten him up”.

At 6.49pm that day AFP picked up the story in which they wrote: “A young Muslim man from Belfort who is the son of police officers has filed a complaint after he was assaulted because he had published photos on social media showing him celebrating Christmas, a police source said on Saturday.” The story is the same as in the DNA but AFP cite the victim's mother who stated: “He fell into an ambush. This case must not be dropped. This was sectarian and racist behaviour.” The other major regional daily newspaper, L’Est Républicain, joined the fray with an article along similar lines.

Reactions to the story then started to come in. At 7.04pm Michel Corriaux, a representative of the Alliance police trade union in the Grand Est region, Tweeted his “anger and his disgust” over such “anti-cop hate” and “revolting religious fundamentalism”. At 8.09pm the president of the Grand Est region, Jean Rottner from the conservative Les Républicains, attacked what he called an “unacceptable assault” and “all too common racism”. And then, at 9.17pm on Boxing Day, it was the turn of interior minister Gérald Darmanin to seize on the report. “No place for separatism in our country, no place for racism wherever it comes from,” he declared.

It was not until the following morning, December 27th, that the state prosecutor for Belfort had his say. In a press statement Éric Plantier gave some facts about the ongoing investigation and then used the opportunity to make a few critical observations. Addressing journalists first of all, he stated: “These articles and news stories were published without checking with the prosecution in Belfort.” The prosecutor then turned to the journalists' police sources whom he regretted had been “widely disseminated in the press” and whose comments he said had not been based on knowledge of the investigation. Éric Plantier then criticised the “extreme reactions” of “political figures” and unions.

Above all, the Belfort prosecutor reminded people that so far there was nothing to suggest that the young man had been hit because he was celebrating Christmas. Yet this had been asserted as fact by both the DNA and AFP, neither of whom had used the conditional tense, the usual way in French to report an allegation or claim. When questioned by Mediapart, the DNA's Alain Cheval defended his actions. “I had a statement from Unsa, I had the mother – a serving police officer – and one of her colleagues: I think they're credible sources. You can always do better but I checked the information with three different sources. My source had told me: 'I'm going to send it to other journalists but you have a head start.' I had the scoop, I got to it.” Alain Cheval may have had three sources, but they were all linked to the victim. He had relied on the statements of police officers, but not on 'police sources' that had access to the investigation itself.

No one, it seems, saw fit to talk to the prosecutors first. “At the time they published their stories no journalist from the DNA or AFP had got in contact with me,” Éric Plantier told Mediapart. Alain Cheval said: “Indeed, I didn't contact the prosecutor's office. That's my one regret. I knew that it would be difficult to get a response from the prosecutor on December 26th.”

A fresh untruth from Gérald Darmanin

The version of events as given by Ilham Friedrich and some police unions – of which she is one of the local representatives – was taken up by both the local and then national press. “I obviously didn't think that it was going to take off so quickly and so much,” the DNA's Alain Cheval said. “I perhaps trusted the mother too much … as far as I was concerned they were serving police officers. Given the chance again, I'd have used the conditional tense.”

The journalists involved at AFP passed Mediapart on to the group's public relations agency who, because of a technical problem, did not get back to us by the time this article was published.

The Belfort story once again highlights a current media reality that can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences: the dominant role that police unions occupy within journalists' networks of information. To give more credibility to the version of events given by AFP, the mother of the victim, Ilham Friedrich, spoke publicly in her capacity as a representative of the Unsa-Police union. “When my kid turned up there were three other individuals waiting for him and they literally lynched him, knocked him down then beat him up,” she told the DNA and BFM-TV news channel on December 27th.

“We were completely targeted my husband and I, he is a brigadier [editor's note, a rank between constable and sergeant] at Belfort police station who was identified, because Belfort is a small town, and my son was the target, he was beaten up because he is the son of white police officers … No, the children of members of the forces of law and order should not be attacked,” she added.

Thierry Clair, secretary general of Unsa-Police, did not want to say any more about the case. “When the state prosecutor speaks, we don't want to over-communicate afterwards. We prefer to wait for the investigation to take its course, that's our rule,” he told Mediapart.

Indeed, Mediapart understands that all Unsa representatives have been instructed to say nothing more about this case. “We still don't know the attackers' true motives,” admitted one police union representative in the region. “At the start some people no doubt thought that it was good that our colleague from Unsa spoke, as she knew the case from first hand. But it's true that the fact that she was involved in the case makes things a bit more complicated.”

This police officer, who notes that “other unions and police officers from other regions” had also spoken out on the story, sums up his version of events: “Things did perhaps get out of hand but that seems to have come from the press this time.”

If the story took off “so quickly and so much”, to use Alain Cheval's words, that is not just because of the local journalists and police unions. The reaction to the story by interior minister Gérald Darmanin gave it far more weight. “I dare to hope that he didn't use my article as the basis for his Tweet, but that he did in fact check what it was about,” said Alain Cheval of the DNA. According to Mediapart's information, no one from the minister's office took the trouble to contact the prosecutor's office at Belfort to check the accuracy of the press reports.

Even the police officer cited above said he was “surprised” by the minister's Tweet. “It's true his message was written in the conditional, but the minister of the interior is supposed to be very well informed and to communicate once he has received the facts. There's a problem with his message, no doubt,” he acknowledged. Gérald Darmanin's office declined to comment when approached by Mediapart. Nor was there any comment on why the minister's Tweet had not subsequently been deleted.

It is yet one more episode in the difficult relationship that Gérald Darmanin has with the truth. On December 12th 2020, for example, he had spoken about the arrest of 142 “ultra-violent” individuals on the fringes of a demonstration in Paris. In fact an investigation by Mediapart proved that they were mostly arbitrary arrests, a large proportion of which led to no further action.

Before that, on December 9th, the interior minister had spoken emotionally of a “police officer knocked down by someone who didn't stop”, neglecting to mention that it had been a police vehicle. On November 30th he boasted how he had not “retained in the police” an officer who had worn a Nazi badge. In fact, the member of the CRS riot police in question is still in his job; Gérald Darmanin had simply blocked his promotion.

The police trade unionist cited earlier believes that the real problem today is that there is “too much communication from all directions”. He said: “When an assault like this occurs the hierarchy doesn't speak. So there is therefore a vacuum to fill and it becomes a communications battle between the social networks and police officers.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• The original French version of this article can be found here.

English version by Michael Streeter