Video of Fight in Brazil Passed Off as Attack on Muslim in France

A CCTV video of a man beating up two men has gone viral with a false claim that that it shows a Muslim man fighting back two French men in France. An archive of the post can be found here.

(Photo: Screenshot/Facebook)

A CCTV video of a man beating up two men has gone viral with a false claim that it shows a Muslim man fighting back two French men in France. The same footage is also viral with another claim that says that the footage is from Kuwait and shows the fight between an Egyptian man and two Kuwaiti men.

However, we found that the incident was neither from France nor Kuwait. The fight seen in the video took place at a restaurant in Minas Gerais, Brazil.

An archive of the post can be found here.

CLAIM

The claim along with the video reads: “फ्रांस में दो फ्रांसिओ ने एक अकेले मुसलमान को देख कर झगड़ा करना शुरु कर दिया फिर देखे उस मुजाहिद ने क्या हाल किया इन दोनों का वाह |”
[Translation: Two French men attacked a Muslim in France, thinking he is alone and will be unable to fight back. Watch the video to know how the Muslim man fought back. ]

This video was widely shared on Facebook with the same caption.

The search results can be found here.

The same clip has been shared with another claim in Arabic: “Assault on an Egyptian in Kuwait, but the Egyptian scourged them”.

The video was shared on YouTube and blogs with the same claim.

An archive of the post can be found here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We broke the video down into frames using the InVid WeVerify chrome extension. Upon conducting a reverse image search on some of the frames, we found a report published about a brawl at a restaurant in Minas Gerais in Brazil.

We then did a keyword search for “fight in Minas Gerais restaurant” and found news reports about an incident that had a screenshot of the same video.

An archive of the post can be found here.

According to the report, the man seen beating up the duo was a delivery boy. One of the men (in black vest) was identified as Rafael Junior da Costa Vieira, also known as Jackie Chan. He is a repeat offender, the report adds.

The same report was also found in Brazillian newspaper Estado De Minas that was published on 23 October.

The fight reportedly took place on 12 October when Vieira threatened people in a cafe with a gun and fired shots in the air.

The G1 report published on 27 October included a quote from the investigating officer in the case, Marcelo Fonseca Prado, who said that Vieira was in an inebriated state on the night of the fight. He was arrested later in the night.

A longer version of the clip from the day of the incident that could be found on a Brazil-based news portal UOL’s YouTube handle shows Vieira holding the gun and point it towards a man.

Therefore, it is evident that a video from Brazil was shared with the false claim that it is from France and Kuwait.

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