Terrorists threaten Notre Dame cathedral in old, fake video

Published on 16/09/2025 - 10:24 GMT+2

A video has gone viral connected societal media alleging that a Muslim violent radical has threatened to pain the Notre Dame Cathedral successful Paris, unless French authorities merchandise Brahim Aouissaoui.

He is simply a Tunisian national who killed 3 radical successful a violent onslaught successful Nice successful 2020.

The video shows 3 masked men issuing their ultimatum earlier mounting a exemplary of Notre Dame connected fire.

They each carnivore a logo connected their sleeves that resembles that of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist radical formerly led by Syria's President Ahmed al-Sharaa.

"Your churches volition beryllium burned by God's will," 1 of the men says.

The video has been shared by galore accounts connected antithetic societal media platforms, including European politicians specified arsenic right-wing populist Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński.

However, the video isn't thing new—a reverse representation hunt shows it archetypal started circulating successful January 2025 and was swiftly debunked astatine the time.

Fact-checkers astatine France24 noted astatine the clip that the video was enactment retired utilizing anonymous channels and not utilizing HTS's accustomed means of communication. It apt has a pro-Russian origin, according to the outlet.

The HTS logo featured connected the sleeves doesn't afloat lucifer the existent one, and the men look to talk with an Egyptian accent successful Arabic alternatively than a Syrian one.

Some quality outlets look to person been fooled by the re-emergence of the video, with immoderate of them since taking down their reporting connected it.

Its reappearance besides prompted immoderate societal media users to stock aged videos of Notre Dame burning, claiming that the terrorists had already carried retired their attack. However, the cathedral famously caught occurrence by mishap backmost successful April 2019, which is what is depicted successful these posts.

What happened successful the Nice attack?

The taxable of the mendacious violent video is Brahim Aouissaoui, who stabbed 3 radical to decease astatine the Notre-Dame basilica successful Nice connected 29 October 2020.

One unfortunate was recovered with a chopped to her pharynx truthful heavy that it appeared to beryllium an effort to decapitate her, officials said during the aftermath of the attack.

Aouissaoui was convicted and sentenced to beingness imprisonment successful February of this year.

French authorities attributed the attack, which occurred 2 weeks aft an Islamic violent murdered schoolhouse teacher Samuel Paty, to Islamic extremism.