Fact Check: Video from 2012 being falsely shared as attack on French embassy in Sudan
By Newsmeter Network Published on 30 Oct 2020 1:11 PM GMTHyderabad: A video of a huge group of people breaking into a building and setting it on fire has gone viral with the claim that Muslims have attacked the French embassy in Sudan, North Africa, in retaliation for the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad that were shown by a French teacher in his class on freedom of speech, who was later beheaded in France.
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FACT CHECK:
The claims that the video is recent and is retaliation for the actions of the teacher are FALSE.
NewsMeter performed a reverse image search of a frame from this clip and found a YouTube video from September 2012. Upon translation, the description read, 'A video of the attack on the American Embassy in Sudan'.
Using this information, we searched for reports online and found one by a German Newspaper 'Der Tagesspiegel' dated 14 September 2012. It attached the same visuals from the viral video and stated, 'In Sudan's capital Khartoum, hundreds of angry demonstrators stormed the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany and partially set it on fire'.
We also found a video report by CNN from September 2012 that stated that protestors were able to overpower security forces to breach the walls of the German embassy in Khartoum, Sudan.
The same was also stated by DW and The Guardian from 2012. This fight was in response to an 'anti-Islamic' scene in an American movie trailer. The film was denounced as 'reprehensible' by the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.
Hence, it is clear that the viral video is from 2012 and is not related to what happened to the recent events in France.