A Sikh man, who was incorrectly linked to last year's Paris attacks, has again been wrongly identified on social media as being involved in Nice attack.
A doctored selfie by Veerender Jubbal, a freelance tech journalist living in Canada, shows him wearing suicide vest and holding the Quran. The image circulated widely on social media and Jubbal said he feared for his safety.
Trolls targeted Jubbal again after 84 people, including many children, were killed in Thursday's attack in Nice. They circulated the same image linking Jubbal to the attack, reports
The Independent.
Eighteen others are in a critical condition after a
lorry ploughed through crowds who had gathered to celebrate the French national day. Police shot dead the driver, French-Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, 31.
Simran Jeet Singh, a Senior Religion Fellow for the Sikh Coalition, shared a screenshot of a tweet from an account which is now suspended wrongly claiming his friend was “reportedly involved in the Nice terror attacks”.
Singh told the Independent: “The earliest accusation was the tweet from Sam Hyde. [...] That's different than last year's Paris attacks when these accusations were circulated so widely that European news outlets picked them.”
Other social media users are now trying to shut down the false rumours with tweets also refuting them.
In January 2015, gunmen
killed 12 people at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It was followed by November's
massacre of 130 people in and around Paris.
Police have arrested
five suspects over Nice attack, reportedly
claimed by IS. A state of emergency, declared after Paris attacks, is to be extended for three months.
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