Old Video from Canada Viral as Muslim Woman Assaulted in France

The video is from Canada where a cop, currently facing trial, assaulted a black woman in 2017.

A CCTV footage showing a cop assaulting a handcuffed woman is being shared on the internet with a claim that it is from France and the woman being attacked is a Muslim.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A CCTV footage showing a cop assaulting a handcuffed woman is being shared on the internet with a claim that it is from France and the woman being attacked is a Muslim. However, we found that the video is from Canada where a cop, currently facing trial, assaulted a black woman. The video is from 2017 and was revived in 2020.

CLAIM

In addition to claiming that the cop in the video is French, some users also claimed that he tried to “forcefully remove the scarf off the Muslim lady’s head”.

The video is massively viral on Facebook and Twitter with the same misleading claim.

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

An archived version of the post can be accessed here.(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

WHAT WE FOUND

We fragmented the viral video into multiple keyframes using the InVid Google Chrome extension. Next, we ran a reverse image search on one of these frames and found news reports by several Canadian media outlets which carried the same video.

(Source: CBC News/Screenshot)

According to a report by CBC News dated 27 October, the policeman in the video, Alex Dunn, is on trial for assault causing bodily harm.

This video first surfaced in 2017 from Calgary in Canada, where Dunn arrested Dalia Kafi (the woman seen in the video) for breaching her court-imposed curfew. The video shows Kafi ducking away from Dunn as he tries to remove a scarf from her head to take a photo.

The CBC report adds that “after a brief struggle, Kafi, who is Black and was 26 years old at the time, was thrown to the ground with her hands still cuffed behind her back.”

Several other reports mention that Kafi, who was violently body-slammed to the ground, is a black woman. However, her religion has not been specified.

Clearly, an old video from Canada has resurfaced with a claim that it shows police brutality on Muslims in France. This is one among several other fake news stories which have been debunked by The Quint after the beheading of a school teacher in Paris for showing a cartoon of Prophet Mohammad.

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